The large object at 10 Downing Street is supposed to be a submarine.
Strangely reminiscent of Claes Oldenburg’s soft sculptures (more).

No. 10 Downing St. has released a white paper—The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent—arguing that Britain should replace the Trident system, keeping its nuclear deterrent (though dropping the number of warheads to 160).

The debate over Trident is somewhat surreal because, frankly, the UK’s nuclear weapons are irrelevant: they don’t deter anyone, confer any status or, frankly, threaten anyone. They are not particularly good or bad. It isn’t even clear to me that you could get a really passionate argument going among people from Aldermaston and CND, unless you got them talking about football.

Sir Michael Quinlan—whom I have met and would guess leans more toward maintaining the UK deterrent than I would—best summarizes the issues. Writing a marvelously honest essay in the July 2006 International Affairs, Quinlan concludes that the decision is between competing interests that are significant but not overwelming:

For some participants in the debate the ‘right’ conclusion to the debate about continuance is already evident almost a priori, whether in one direction on perceived ethical grounds—not explored in this article—or in the other for nearinstinctive reasons of national identity, sovereignty and security. But for those (perhaps a majority, and including this writer) for whom the issue cannot be settled out of hand in such ways, the debate is scarcely yet sufficiently developed or factbased to warrant categoric conclusions. The core of the issue becomes how to weigh possible strategic advantages—significant, but not overwhelming—against certain costs, also significant but probably not overwhelming. Government ministers, while giving several indications of a disposition towards continuance, have declared the government’s readiness for full and open debate—by implication, in advance of a firm decision rather than, as in 1980, in examination and defence of a decision taken.

Quinlan’s essay accompanies others by Michael McGwire, Julian Lewis, Keith Hartley and Len Scott in an issue of International Affairs that is a great place to start thinking about the Trident debate.

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But I live in the United States, and I have another question.

Did the Bush Administration pressure Blair’s government to replace Trident?

The UK MOD white paper notes the US has never threatened to cut the Brits off:

The US has never sought to exploit our procurement relationship in this area as a means to influence UK foreign policy nor does this relationship compromise the operational independence of our nuclear deterrent.

And that makes sense: The US has, since the 1950s, wanted Britain in the nuclear weapons business. But I wonder about a different question, namely how Washington would react if Britain wanted out?

I suspect the Bush Administration (and most Democratic ones) would freak, seriously worried about how NATO debates over tactical nuclear weapons and nuclear first use would change without the UK as a partner in such blocking efforts. (A dynamic that Lawrence Freedman described in 1981.)

The conversation probably never happened—because the Brits probably never wanted out—but I bet the Brits internally assumed some level of damage to the relationship if they ditched the nuclear weapons. Moreover, it probably didn’t have to be said.

Now that the US Congress may start exercising some oversight, I think someone ought to inquire into exactly what the we told the Brits about their nuclear deterrent. Given the deep relationship between the two nuclear capabilities, those discussions absolutely took place—if only to appraise them of development on a reliable replacement warhead to supercede the W76 that arms their US made Trident missiles.

And our policy, absolutely, should be to make clear to the Brits that the decision about keeping nuclear weapons is their sovereign decision and would have no effect on the special relationship.

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Something else I’ve noticed: British strategic debates are just wittier than ours. From Michael Clarke’s article “Does My Bomb Look Big in This?” to Michael McGwire’s description of nuclear weapons as “the lace curtains of Britain’s political poverty,” British nuclear strategists seem to be channeling Oscar Wilde.

What’s next? Malcolm Chisholm demanding that “either Trident goes or I do” before dropping dead in the House of Commons?