Is Blair stifling debate about Britain’s nukes?

United Kingdom

There’s a “dreary sense of inevitability” about Britain’s pursuit of more powerful nuclear weapons, said the London Guardian in an editorial. Don’t expect a public debate on this vital issue. Every time the country has faced a decision about whether and how to upgrade its nukes, the government of the day has made the choice “in secret.” In the 1970s, a Labor government upgraded to a Polaris system “without telling the public at all.” In the 1980s, a Conservative government announced the acquisition of the U.S.-made Trident system only after the deal was done. And now that the Trident submarines are nearing their sell-by date, the current, Labor government says it will roll out its white paper on what to do next before Christmas. That means the decision has already been made, and a subsequent parliamentary debate will be mere “window dressing.” Yet “where is the evidence that the decision must be taken this winter?” The subs and their missiles will last at least 15 more years.

Britons deserve an open debate on this issue, said London’s Daily Telegraph. The Trident system—four subs, each carrying 16 nuclear missiles—was chosen as our deterrent back when the West faced a single nuclear-armed enemy, the Soviet Union. Now, though, we face a decentralized threat of Islamic terrorist cells, as well as emerging nuclear rogue states in Iran and North Korea. A British nuclear deterrent is probably still necessary, but shouldn’t we debate what kind of deterrent? Is it best to have it sea-based, or should we consider another option? We also need to discuss where to purchase the weapons. After all, “the special relationship between Britain and America,” which supplies the Trident missiles, “has been called into question by the disaster of Iraq.” All these factors add up to an issue that a democratic society should decide democratically.

But our leaders don’t think we can handle the truth, said Richard Norton-Taylor in The Guardian. So Prime Minister Tony Blair and his heir presumptive, Chancellor Gordon Brown, are cheating the voters out of a vital discussion. In truth, there are four options we could choose from: extend the life of the current system, buy a new Trident system, buy a whole new system from some other manufacturer, or scrap nuclear weapons altogether. That last option merits serious consideration, particularly as “the government has yet to explain who now would be deterred by Trident.” So far the most compelling reason the government has for keeping nukes is that it can’t stomach “the prospect of France being Europe’s only nuclear power.”

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James Blitz

Financial Times