Oliver Kamm: The rationale for keeping the bomb has changed over the decades
Earlier this month one of the most significant figures in human history, Paul Tibbets, died aged 92. Tibbets flew the plane that dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima. Ever since, political leaders have faced the immanent risk of the destruction of civilisation through design or miscalculation. In response, every British government has supported the development and maintenance of an independent nuclear deterrent. What were the reasons, how far were they were justified and are they applicable to policymaking now?
A book published last week, Cabinets and the Bomb, by the historian Peter Hennessy, provides a remarkable documentary record of these deliberations. The story is told through declassified Cabinet and Cabinet committee papers, and is supplemented by expert annotations and references to other contemporary sources. It makes clear that, while underlying policy has been consistent, the arguments deployed to support an independent deterrent have shifted markedly. They comprise, in the words of the former MoD official Sir Michael Quinlan, “a set of rationales to clothe that gut decision”.
But the initial gut decision to develop a deterrent was far from irrational. In August 1945 the new Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, wrote a terse memorandum in which he noted: “We recognise, or some of us did before this war, that bombing could only be answered by counter bombing... The answer to an atomic bomb on London is an atomic bomb on another great city.” Coupled with his conviction that “this invention has made it essential to end wars”, Attlee had encapsulated the notion of mutual deterrence by counter-city targeting. There was no necessary reason that postwar Britain, with its enfeebled economy, should then have sought an independent nuclear deterrent. But Nato had not yet been formed, and America's continued commitment to Europe's defence was uncertain. In 1946 Congress prohibited the sharing of nuclear information with any other country. In Cabinet, the Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin insisted — apparently after a long lunch — that, with regard to the A-bomb, “we've got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it”.
Considering the party's later temporary aversion to nuclear defence, it is worth recalling that the independent deterrent was Labour's creation....
The capital cost of renewing Trident will amount to about 3 per cent of the defence budget, and there is no reason to suppose that the costs will run out of control. The only way to deter a nuclear attack is, as Attlee instinctively perceived at the start of the nuclear age, and as his successors have all agreed, to possess nuclear weapons.
It is the uncertainty of an anarchic international order that has persuaded British governments to maintain the deterrent. That is the gut decision at the heart of this debate. It remains the right one.
Read entire article at Times (UK)
A book published last week, Cabinets and the Bomb, by the historian Peter Hennessy, provides a remarkable documentary record of these deliberations. The story is told through declassified Cabinet and Cabinet committee papers, and is supplemented by expert annotations and references to other contemporary sources. It makes clear that, while underlying policy has been consistent, the arguments deployed to support an independent deterrent have shifted markedly. They comprise, in the words of the former MoD official Sir Michael Quinlan, “a set of rationales to clothe that gut decision”.
But the initial gut decision to develop a deterrent was far from irrational. In August 1945 the new Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, wrote a terse memorandum in which he noted: “We recognise, or some of us did before this war, that bombing could only be answered by counter bombing... The answer to an atomic bomb on London is an atomic bomb on another great city.” Coupled with his conviction that “this invention has made it essential to end wars”, Attlee had encapsulated the notion of mutual deterrence by counter-city targeting. There was no necessary reason that postwar Britain, with its enfeebled economy, should then have sought an independent nuclear deterrent. But Nato had not yet been formed, and America's continued commitment to Europe's defence was uncertain. In 1946 Congress prohibited the sharing of nuclear information with any other country. In Cabinet, the Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin insisted — apparently after a long lunch — that, with regard to the A-bomb, “we've got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it”.
Considering the party's later temporary aversion to nuclear defence, it is worth recalling that the independent deterrent was Labour's creation....
The capital cost of renewing Trident will amount to about 3 per cent of the defence budget, and there is no reason to suppose that the costs will run out of control. The only way to deter a nuclear attack is, as Attlee instinctively perceived at the start of the nuclear age, and as his successors have all agreed, to possess nuclear weapons.
It is the uncertainty of an anarchic international order that has persuaded British governments to maintain the deterrent. That is the gut decision at the heart of this debate. It remains the right one.