House of Commons - Foreign Affairs Committee

Global Security: UK-US Relations - Foreign Affairs Committee Contents

Written evidence from Professor Norman Dombey, University of Sussex

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

— After the Second World War the US passed the McMahon Act in 1946 in an attempt to preserve its monopoly of nuclear weapons. In 1958 the US amended the McMahon Act so that the US may transfer nuclear weapon design information, nuclear materials and specialised components to allies, that have made `substantial progress in the development of atomic weapons'. This means the ability to build thermonuclear weapons (H-bombs). — The UK is the only beneficiary of this Amendment. In that sense the US-UK relationship for nuclear cooperation for defence purposes really is special.— Under the Mutual Defence Agreement (MDA) of 1958 the UK is not allowed to communicate any information transferred to it by the US to third parties.

— US scientists noted after their first meeting with their UK counterparts after the MDA came into force in 1958 that `it appeared likely that certain advances made by the United Kingdom would be of benefit to the United States'. This referred in particular to the spherical secondary developed by Keith Roberts, Bryan Taylor and colleagues at Aldermaston.

— A second meeting of scientists from both sides under the MDA was held in September 1958. At this meeting actual "blueprints, material specifications, and relevant theoretical and experimental information" of warheads were exchanged. This allowed the UK to build US-designed weapons in this country.

— Aldermaston and the Treasury have subsequently learned that it is much safer to copy established US designs than to design a new warhead.

— Since 1958 all UK nuclear weapons contain elements of US design information and therefore those designs cannot be communicated to third parties without US permission. Hence it is not possible to consider sharing nuclear weapon information with France.

— The effect of the 1959 Amendment to the 1958 Agreement is to allow the US to transfer to the UK what Senator Anderson called "do-it-yourself kits" for making nuclear weapons.

— At Nassau in 1962 the Prime Minister suggested, and the President agreed, that some part of UK forces would be assigned as part of a NATO nuclear force and targeted in accordance with NATO plans. British forces under this plan will be assigned and targeted in the same way as other NATO nuclear forces.

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— But even during the Cold War, the control arrangements for the UK's Polaris fleet were not transparent.

— While Defence Ministers from NATO countries dutifully met twice a year in the Nuclear Planning Group after 1990 there was generally nothing to discuss other than disposal of old weapons. No communiques were issued updating NATO's new nuclear posture.

— NATO has radically reduced its reliance on nuclear forces. According to the NATO website `their role is now more fundamentally political, and they are no longer directed towards a specific threat'.

— I conclude that there is no meaningful assignment of the Trident force to NATO, since NATO no longer has a nuclear posture.

— NATO may not have a nuclear posture but the United States certainly does have one. Its Single Integrated Operational Plan or SIOP specifies how American nuclear weapons would be used in the event of nuclear war.

— It seems to me that the only possible meaning of "assigned to NATO" or the equivalent phrase "international arrangements for mutual defence and security" is that the UK Trident fleet is in practice assigned to the US: it operates in conjunction with the US fleet under SIOP or the successor to SIOP.

— By sleight-of-hand the Trident fleet is a national fleet and a NATO fleet at the same time.

— The US possesses a National Target Base of potential nuclear strike targets as part of SIOP or the successor to SIOP. These are drawn up at US Strategic Command [STRATCOM] headquarters in Omaha where there is a UK liaison mission. Any British plans can be incorporated if approved into the US operational plan. There is a Nuclear Operations and Targeting Centre in London which co-ordinates with STRATCOM. But the targetting software is provided by STRATCOM and its affiliates in the US. The software includes data which the UK cannot provide by itself.

— The UK could not target New York because STRATCOM would not prepare the target software.

— It seems to me that while the UK may well have had good reasons in 1958 for entering into the MDA with the US, it needs to reassess the situation. It is very surprising that the MDA has endured for 50 years with only minor amendment to its terms. In my opinion it is very unlikely that it will survive the next 50 years.

— I hope that I have demonstrated that the US-UK relationship in nuclear matters is unequal. The UK is the perpetual supplicant and the US is the provider. This cannot be healthy: it means that the UK government lives in constant fear that the US may not supply or may restrict the supply of whatever it requires for nuclear defence.

— Today nuclear weapons are much better understood but the codes describing their behaviour were developed in the US, not the UK. Los Alamos and Livermore Laboratories would scarcely notice if Aldermaston gave up its work.

— If Scotland were to secede from the UK it is likely that England would have to give up possession of nuclear weapons. This would lead to the termination of the MDA and the Polaris Agreement. The Special Relationship would come to an end. It would be sensible for the government to make contingency plans for that possibility.

— "In sum, the benefits to Britain of its nuclear weapons are at best meagre and mainly hypothetical. What then of the costs?

— The financial burden is not really significant (about 5% of the defence vote). However, the need for technological support is largely responsible for the country's political dependence on America."

1. BACKGROUND

1.1 The agreement between the UK and US on co-operation on nuclear energy for mutual defense purposes (I use the US spelling because that is what was used in the original agreement signed on 3 July 1958 and is a pointer to the subordinate role of the UK in the relationship) originates in the Manhattan Project of the Second World War when under the Quebec Agreement the UK, US and Canada pooled their resources to work on nuclear energy for both military and civil applications. Following the defeat of the Axis powers, the US Congress which had not been informed of the Quebec Agreement passed an Atomic Energy Act [the 1946 McMahon Act] which severely limited the transfer of restricted nuclear information and materials to any other state. One of the major goals of British policy after 1946 was to resume the nuclear relationship with the US.[139] This goal was achieved in 1958 by the passage of an Amendment to the US Atomic Energy Act which allowed the transfer by the US of nuclear information and materials for military use to allies which have made "substantial progress" in nuclear weapon development. This was code for the capacity to make thermonuclear weapons (hydrogen bombs) in addition to fission weapons (atomic bombs).

1.2 Britain demonstrated that it had made substantial progress in nuclear weaponry when it exploded Short Granite in May 1957 in the presence of US observers which was followed by a meeting of US and UK nuclear scientists in August 1957 when the British were allowed to discuss their weapon designs: to the surprise of the Americans they demonstrated a compact two-stage thermonuclear weapon with a spherical secondary. Short Granite was a hydrogen bomb [a two-stage thermonuclear device] but did not attain the desired yield of 1 MT (equivalent to one megaton of TNT equivalent). Nevertheless the Grapple X test of 8 November 1957 did achieve a yield of over 1 MT and was followed by the Grapple Y and Z tests of 28 April and 2 September 1958 which refined the design and achieved the design target of a warhead weighing less than 1 ton with a yield of 1 MT.

1.3 On the political front the US amended the McMahon Act on 2 July 1958 allowing the first of the two agreements between the US and UK on co-operation on the uses of atomic energy for mutual defence purposes: the first of which was signed on 3 July 1958. The Agreement was amended the following year to include matters that were more politically difficult for Congress to deal with. The 1958 Agreement as amended in 1959 together with subsequent amendments which extend the time frame lay the framework for the US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement (MDA) which still is in force today over 50 years later. I would like to consider it in some detail.

1.4 The preamble of the 1958 Agreement is important as it outlines its basis in US law and thus how the US views the MDA. The first two clauses state (i) that both the US and the UK need to deploy nuclear weapons for their "mutual security and defense" and (ii) that requirement may well involve thermonuclear weapons in addition to fission weapons since both the US and the UK have made substantial progress in the development of atomic weapons. The third clause points out that both the US and the UK participate in "international arrangements" [code for NATO] for their "mutual defense and security". The remainder of the preamble states that the transfer of information, equipment and materials allowed under the agreement will benefit their mutual defence and security.

1.5 Article I then spells out that the transfers allowed by the Agreement will promote mutual defence and security since both the US and the UK participate in "an international arrangement for their mutual defense and security". Note that the agreement to co-operate is limited to "while the United States and the United Kingdom are participating in an international arrangement for their mutual defense and security" so that if the UK were to withdraw its nuclear forces from the "international arrangement", ie NATO or its equivalent, the US would no longer be bound by the agreement.

1.6 Part A of Article II is a paragraph which is common to all agreements between the US and its NATO allies which allows those allies to receive classified information about nuclear weapons so that US nuclear weapons can be transferred to them in time of war when SACEUR, who is always a US General, would take command. By this means, allied air forces in NATO can practice with dummy weapons on board. NATO allies who can take advantage of these arrangements are Belgium, Germany, Greece, Holland, Italy and Turkey. Part B of article II is only for the benefit of allies that have made substantial progress in nuclear weapons, that is to say, Britain and France. President de Gaulle refused to allow France to participate in these arrangements, so Britain is the unique beneficiary. In that sense the US-UK nuclear co-operation arrangements for defence purposes really are special.

1.7 Part B of Article II allows the US and UK to exchange nuclear weapon designs together with information needed for the fabrication of nuclear weapons.

1.8 Article III concerns nuclear-powered submarines. Britain was able to launch its hunter-killer submarine fleet as a result of the transfer of a complete reactor propulsion plant authorised by Article III together with the transfer of high enriched uranium 235 to fuel the reactor. Note that Britain needs to pay for that U-235 under Part C and to indemnify the US against liabilities under Part E so that it is not correct to say that this Agreement has no spending implications.

1.9 Article VII does not allow the UK to communicate any information transferred to it by the US to third parties without authorisation by the US. In particular the US retains intellectual property rights for any nuclear weapon design information transferred by it to the UK under Article II Part B.

1.10 The effect of the 1959 Amendment is to allow the US to transfer to the UK what Senator Anderson in the hearings of the subcommittee of the US Joint Committee on Atomic Energy called "do-it-yourself kits" for making nuclear weapons. While Article II Part B of the original Agreement allows US nuclear weapon design information to be communicated to the UK, the new Article III bis allows complete non-parts of nuclear weapons to be transferred together with "source, by-product and special nuclear material, and other material, ... for use in atomic weapons" to be transferred. Special nuclear material refers to uranium 235 and plutonium; source material refers to natural uranium or uranium 238 while by-product material refers to tritium and lithium 6.

1.11 I will not pursue the matter here but this arrangement whereby as General Lopez for the US Department of Defense conceded at the hearings: "1. you can transfer design information, and 2. you can transfer non-nuclear components, and 3. you can transfer nuclear materials unfabricated if you apply all the sections of the law that are pertinent to the subject. Now, taking all these three things together, one could, if he got all of them, build himself an atomic weapon. I don't think that there is any question but that this technicality exists. We would not say that it does not." So as I concluded in an article written 25 years ago "in the future language of the NPT, the US-UK Agreement of 1958 [as amended] does not allow the direct transfer of nuclear weapons but it does allow the indirect transfer of nuclear weapons from the US to the UK". Yet this is forbidden by Article I of the NPT which came into force in 1970.

1.12 Almost immediately following the passage of the Amendment to the McMahon Act and the 1958 US-UK Agreement on Co-operation a meeting of scientists from both sides was held in August 1958 in Washington. At that meeting there was an exchange of information on the gross characteristics of the weapons in stockpile or in production. The US noted that "it appeared likely that certain advances made by the United Kingdom would be of benefit to the United States". This referred in particular to the spherical secondary developed by Keith Roberts, Bryan Taylor and colleagues at Aldermaston. The original Ulam-Teller design developed in the US involved a cylindrical secondary and the subsequent adoption of a spherical secondary by the US following the 1958 Co-operation Agreement allowed the US to build compact thermonuclear weapons as they do today.

1.13 A second meeting of scientists from both sides under the MDA was held in Albuquerque in September 1958. At this meeting actual "blueprints, material specifications, and relevant theoretical and experimental information" of warheads was exchanged. This allowed the UK to build US weapons in this country. Note that details of the XW-47 warhead were included: this was the warhead that was to be fitted to the US Polaris missiles in the early 1960s. This was replaced by the W-58 on US A3 Polaris missiles from 1964 until 1982 whose design would have been passed on to the UK under the MDA for use in the UK fleet. Details of the Mark 28 hydrogen bomb were also transferred: that was used by the RAF from 1961 onwards and called Yellow Sun Mark II [Yellow Sun Mark I was the high yield fission bomb referred to above].

1.14 The present Trident fleet is reported to use a version of the W-76 warhead first developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1972. Indeed since the massive over-budget expenditure on the Chevaline project in the 1970s and 1980s which was the last time that the UK attempted to design its own warhead, Aldermaston and the Treasury have learned that it is much safer to copy established US designs than to design a new warhead.

1.15 Since 1958 all UK nuclear weapons contain elements of US design information and therefore those designs cannot be communicated to third parties without US permission. Hence it is not possible to consider sharing nuclear weapon information with France because unlike France, the UK does not possess intellectual property rights over its nuclear weapon designs, unless it were to go back to the designs discussed in the 1958 meetings in the US. Nor is it possible to design a new warhead for a cruise missile, for example, in place of the Trident missile system without US agreement.

1.16 The MDA has now been extended many times, most recently in 2004.

2. POLARIS AND TRIDENT (1962-90)

2.1 On 21 December 1962 President Kennedy and Mr Macmillan issued a joint "Statement on Nuclear Defence Systems" at Nassau. The subsequent Polaris Sales Agreement is subject to that statement according to Article I of the Agreement. The statement includes:

(7) Returning to Polaris, the President and the Prime Minister agreed that the purpose of their two Governments with respect to the provisions of the Polaris missiles must be the development of a multilateral NATO nuclear force in the closest consultation with other NATO allies. They will use their best endeavours to this end.

(8) Accordingly, the President and the Prime Minister agreed that the United States will make available on a continuing basis Polaris missiles (less warheads) for British submarines. The United States also study the feasibility of making available certain support facilities for such submarines. The United Kingdom Government will construct the submarines in which these weapons will be placed and they will also provide the nuclear warheads for the Polaris missiles. British forces developed under this plan will be assigned and targeted in the same way as forces described in Paragraph 6.

These forces and at least equal United States forces would be made available for inclusion in a NATO multilateral nuclear force. The Prime Minister made it clear that, except where her Majesty's Government may decide that supreme national interests are at stake, these British forces will be used for the purposes of international defence of the western alliance in all circumstances.'

2.2 Following Nassau, the Polaris Sales Agreement was signed on 6 April 1963. Note that in addition to agreeing to supply the missiles including guiding capsules, the US also supplies missile launching and handling systems, missile fire control systems, ship navigation systems and spare parts, together with full technical documentation. Furthermore the UK is allowed to use missile range facilities in the US for test launches.

2.3 Note that Article XIV restricts any transfer of information relating to the missiles to any recipient other than a "United Kingdom officer, employee, national or firm" without the consent of the US. So the UK may have legal ownership of missiles provided under the agreement, but as with nuclear weapon designs it does not have intellectual property rights.

2.4 The NATO multilateral force never took place. But on the renewal of the Polaris Sale Agreement every government has affirmed that the missiles supplied by the US will be assigned to NATO barring exceptional circumstances when supreme national interests are at stake. For example when Britain decided to replace Polaris by the Trident I C4 missile in 1980 Francis Pym, then Defence Secretary stated to the House of Commons that the missile "Once bought, it will be entirely within our ownership and operational control but we shall continue to commit the whole force to NATO in the same way that the Polaris force is committed today".

2.5 Similarly when Britain decided to replace the Trident I C4 missile with the Trident II D5 missile, Mrs Thatcher wrote to President Reagan that "Like the Polaris force, and consistent with the agreement reached in 1980 on the supply of Trident I missiles, the United Kingdom Trident II force will be assigned to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation; and except where the United Kingdom Government may decide that supreme national interests are at stake, this successor force will be used for the purposes of international defence of the Western alliance in all circumstances".

2.6 Even during the Cold War, the control arrangements for the UK's Polaris fleet were not transparent. SACEUR, always a US General, controlled US nuclear weapons assigned to NATO forces. SACLANT (an American Admiral) controlled the US fleet in the Atlantic, presumably including US submarines armed with Polaris or Poseidon missiles. If the British and an equivalent US Polaris/Poseidon fleet were assigned to NATO in normal circumstances, either SACEUR or SACLANT would be expected to have overall control although the British submarines would report to the Commander at Northwood.

2.7 NATO's Nuclear Planning Group decided the posture of nuclear forces assigned to NATO. According to NATO itself "During the Cold War, NATO's nuclear forces played a central role in the Alliance's strategy of flexible response. To deter major war in Europe, nuclear weapons were integrated into the whole of NATO's force structure, and the Alliance maintained a variety of targeting plans which could be executed at short notice".

2.8 The nuclear weapons assigned to NATO were generally for theatre or non-strategic purposes. These were, for example, the US freefall bombs carried by allied airforces from the 1960s onwards and the cruise missiles and Pershings of the 1980s. It is therefore not clear how Britain's strategic forces fit into this scenario. Nor is it clear how US submarines assigned to NATO differed in their tasks from US submarines directly controlled within the US force structure.

3. POLARIS AND TRIDENT (1991-2009)

3.1 Once the Soviet Union disintegrated, the Warsaw Pact followed taking with it NATO's policy of flexible response. While Defence Ministers from NATO countries dutifully met twice a year in the Nuclear Planning Group there was generally nothing to discuss other than disposal of old weapons. No communiques were issued updating NATO's new nuclear posture. The Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987 eliminated nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500-5,500 km from Europe and 846 US missiles were destroyed by 1 June 1991.

3.2 NATO has therefore radically reduced its reliance on nuclear forces. According to the NATO website "their role is now more fundamentally political, and they are no longer directed towards a specific threat". The latest document available on NATO's nuclear posture dates from 2002 and is entitled NATO's Nuclear Forces in the New Security Environment. It contains just two references to the UK's Trident fleet, namely:

(i) "Not depicted on the chart [showing NATO's residual nuclear forces] are the sea-based nuclear systems belonging to the United States and/or the United Kingdom that could have been made available to NATO in crisis/conflict and

(ii) "The chart also does not reflect a small number of UK Trident weapons on nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBN), available for a sub-strategic role.

3.3 So even though Tony Blair wrote to President Bush on 7 December 2006 repeating the usual pledge that the Trident force will continue to be assigned to NATO in all circumstances barring a threat to UK's "supreme national interests", I conclude that there is no meaningful assignment of the Trident force to NATO, since NATO no longer has a nuclear posture.

3.4 NATO may not have a nuclear posture but the United States certainly does have one. Its Single Integrated Operational Plan or SIOP specifies how American nuclear weapons would be used in the event of nuclear war. Since both SACEUR and SACLANT are US officers, it seems to me that the only possible meaning of "assigned to NATO" or the equivalent phrase "international arrangements for mutual defence and security" is that the UK Trident fleet is in practice assigned to the US: it operates in conjunction with the US fleet under SIOP or the successor to SIOP.

3.5 According to the Eighth Report of the Commons Defence Committee for 2005-06 the UK's nuclear forces were part of SIOP during the Cold War.[140] It seems to me that this situation persists. That would also explain why UK submarines do not collide with US submarines, although they have collided with France's much smaller submarine fleet.

3.6 If that is the case, the NATO link is purely formal: as far as I understand it the NATO command structure for Trident is based on the British Commander-in-Chief Fleet, having two roles just like SACEUR. He is CINCFLEET with operational headquarters at Northwood, Middlesex, where the UK's forces joint headquarters are situated. But a NATO Regional Command, Allied Maritime Component Command Northwood is sited there too. CINCFLEET is dual-hatted as Commander AMCCN. So by sleight-of-hand the Trident fleet is a national fleet and a NATO fleet at the same time. CINCFLEET has operational control of the Trident fleet and a missile cannot be fired without permission from the Prime Minister.

3.7 But how operationally independent is the Trident fleet? I discuss this in the next section.

4. AN INDEPENDENT DETERRENT?

4.1 I have already pointed out that the warhead used in the Trident fleet is a copy of a US design; that the missiles are made, tested and serviced in the US; and that the Fire Control system is provided by the US. Aldermaston is now principally operated by an American company. Nevertheless in the Eighth Report of the Defence Committee already referred to Sir Michael Quinlan gave evidence that "in the last resort, when the chips are down and we are scared, worried to the extreme, we can press the button and launch the missiles whether the Americans say so or not". Does that mean that the UK has operational independence?

4.2 I will argue that this is not the case. This is not a question of the US disabling the GPS system so that the UK's missiles cannot function for the Trident missile has an inertial guidance system, supplied by the US. The crucial point concerns targetting.

4.3 The US possesses a National Target Base of potential nuclear strike targets as part of SIOP or the successor to SIOP [the name keeps changing]. These are drawn up at US Strategic Command [STRATCOM] headquarters in Omaha where there is a UK liaison mission. Any British plans can be incorporated if approved into the US operational plan. There is a Nuclear Operations and Targeting Centre in London which co-ordinates with STRATCOM. But the targeting software is provided by STRATCOM and its affiliates in the US. The software includes data which the UK cannot provide by itself: photographic information of the target; measurements of the gravitational and magnetic fields in the vicinity of the target and a catalogue of star positions for navigation are required and are provided by the US.

Furthermore day-to-day weather information needs to be relayed to the Trident fleet from the US Fleet Numerical Meteorological and Oceanography Center. So although the UK can suggest targets, it cannot insist on them, nor can it independently provide targeting software for the missiles, while the US can always withdraw support or include lines of code in the software it provides to limit the UK's ability to operate its missiles.

4.4 To take an extreme example which I have used before, the UK could not target New York because STRATCOM would not prepare the target software.

4.5 I therefore agree (at least as far as the words "British" and "independent" are concerned) with Chris Huhne who wrote that "Voltaire famously stated that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. I suspect that Trident as presently constituted is neither British, nor independent, nor a deterrent".[141]

5. THE POLITICAL COST OF THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP

5.1 I am a physical scientist not a political scientist and so I do not claim to be an expert on politics. Nevertheless I have studied the US-UK nuclear co-operation agreement for over 25 years and I have visited the US regularly for over 50 years since enrolling as a PhD student at the California Institute of Technology in September 1959. It seems to me that while the UK may well have had good reasons in 1958 for entering into the MDA with the US, it needs to reassess the situation. It is very surprising that the MDA has endured for 50 years with only minor amendment to its terms. In my opinion it is very unlikely that it will survive the next 50 years. I agree with William Wallace and Christopher Phillips[142] that it is necessary for the UK to reassess the special relationship.

5.2 I hope that I have demonstrated that the US-UK relationship in nuclear matters is unequal. The UK is the perpetual supplicant and the US is the provider. This cannot be healthy: it means that the UK government lives in constant fear that the US may not supply or may restrict the supply of whatever it requires for nuclear defence.

5.3 In 1959, when I first went to the US, the British and American people and governments could still remember their common endeavour in the Second World War. Broadly speaking, the politics of both countries were strongly aligned. The UK was still a world power: indeed Mr Khrushchev visited the UK in 1956 paving the way for his visit to the US in 1959, which I remember well as I had just arrived in the US. Mr Macmillan and President Eisenhower were old friends. Resuming the nuclear co-operation of the Second World War made sense. Furthermore 50 years ago co-operation on nuclear weapons was not totally one-sided as I have shown. Today nuclear weapons are much better understood but the codes describing their behaviour were developed in the US, not the UK. Los Alamos and Livermore Laboratories would scarcely notice if Aldermaston gave up its work.

5.4 What one can say with certainty about the next 50 years is that they will be unlike the past 50 years. The US is no longer a similar country to the UK. In many areas of the US English is a minority language. The US is, moreover, a profoundly religious country—the majority of whose citizens do not believe in evolution: is it likely that the world view of the US will remain aligned with that of the secular and rationalist UK for the next 30 years? Already very different approaches to global warming, the International Criminal Court, international law, the death penalty and the treatment of prisoners have become apparent in the last few years between our two countries. Yet the extensions of the MDA and the Polaris Sales Agreement assume that US-UK relations will remain completely aligned over that time period envisaged, which is at least until 2040.

5.5 In Scotland a majority of the population is against the possession of nuclear weapons, but the UK's nuclear fleet is based in Scotland. Is this situation likely to persist over the next 30 years or could Scotland conceivably follow Ireland and become an independent state within the European Union? If Scotland were to secede from the UK it is likely that England would have to give up possession of nuclear weapons. This would lead to the termination of the MDA and the Polaris Agreement. The Special Relationship would come to an end. It would be sensible for the government to make contingency plans for that possibility.

5.6 The veteran NATO strategist and former naval officer Michael MccGwire wrote recently "In sum, the benefits to Britain of its nuclear weapons are at best meagre and mainly hypothetical. What then of the costs? The financial burden is not really significant (about 5% of the defence vote). However, the need for technological support is largely responsible for the country's political dependence on America".[143] In my opinion that has been demonstrated in spades over the past few years.

5.7 Britain's dependence and subservience to the US have resulted from its clinging to these nuclear agreements and the similar arrangements in intelligence gathering which also stem from Second World War co-operation. Examples of such subservience in recent years are the non-reciprocal extradition agreement with the US; the UK government decision to occupy Iraq together with the US, and the current desire to increase force levels in Afghanistan. This should be contrasted with Canada which in spite of sharing many common security arrangements with the US has a strictly reciprocal extradition agreement with the US. Furthermore Canada did not join in the occupation of Iraq and it has decided to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by 2011.

5.8 Given that major spending commitments to Trident renewal have not yet been made, it seems to me to be essential to reassess the nuclear special relationship in order to allow the UK to begin to free itself from its current political dependence on the US. In Michael MccGwire's words the UK needs to remove its American "comfort blanket" that senior British politicians assume is needed to survive in the outside world.

2 November 2009

138 See para 2.7 below. Back

139 J Simpson, The Independent Nuclear State, Macmillan, London, 1983. Back

140 Eighth Report of the Defence Committee, Session 2005-06, paragraph 44. Back

141 Chris Huhne, "There are better things to do than replace Trident", The Independent, 5 November 2007. Back

142 William Wallace and Christopher Phillips, "Reassessing the Special Relationship", International Affairs, 85 263 (2009). Back

143 Michael MccGwire, "Comfort Blanket or Weapon of War", International Affairs, 82 639 (2006). Back



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