Government and Military

Dear Tony Blair,

We are writing in response to the very full and comprehensive letter Stephen Willmer, of the Ministry of Defence, wrote to us on 28 September 2000 at the request of the Minister of Defence, and indirectly, yourself. We are replying to you as the person ultimately responsible for UK nuclear policy.

Our next disarmament action will be at Faslane on 12 February. We are therefore once again writing to make plain the sort of government measures we hope for in the near future which would encourage us to consider a pause in our own disarmament activities. As before we enclose a list of the names of the current Trident Ploughshares Pledgers. May we remind you that you can check the details of our campaign on www.gn.apc.org/tp2000.

We are pleased to recognise the key role played by the UK in helping to build support for the "New Agenda" resolution, as it had for the 2000 NPT Final Document, especially with the US and the non-nuclear NATO states. We especially welcome the leading role the UK has played in researching and emphasising the "credible and robust verification arrangements" which "will be essential in achieving a world free of nuclear weapons". The UK’s "Food for Thought" paper is also commendable in that it faces the challenges of nuclear disarmament directly and shows that the Government is devoting serious thought to the issue. In a recent parliamentary answer, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon stated that "The United Kingdom’s constructive role in negotiation of that document has been widely recognised". We fully endorse this. We now have a new agenda confirming the NPT consensus on the broader stage of the UNGA and pointing the way forward for nuclear abolition. This means that the behaviour of the NATO states in general, and the UK in particular, must now change to harmonise with the obligations they have undertaken.

We would like to stress the need for urgency. Over the last 50 years the nuclear weapon states have wasted a great deal of human, ideological, financial and technological capital on their nuclear arsenals whilst leaving the urgent problems of poverty, exploitation, pollution and eco-system destruction under-resourced. It is now over ten years since the end of the Cold War; but a world condemned to live indefinitely in fear of nuclear annihilation is still seen by many decision-makers as a normal state of affairs.

Recent NATO statements do not reflect a sense of urgency. We have been warned by Walter Slocombe, US Under Secretary of Defense that "there is no plan for a comprehensive review of NATO nuclear policy." In December a NATO official speaking at a seminar in The Hague confirmed that NATO member governments are not prepared to review nuclear policy other than in the long term. The December 2000 ministerial meetings in Brussels have not been a sufficient response to the growing demands of the rest of the world for a radical change in NATO’s nuclear policy. Nor have they fulfilled the promise of paragraph 32 of the April 1999 Washington Summit Communiqué that "the Alliance will consider options for confidence and security-building measures, verification, non-proliferation and arms control and disarmament".

The Foreign Ministers’ Progress Report of 15 December simply reiterated NATO’s traditional nuclear policy whilst confirming the commitments made by its member states at the NPT Review. The report paid some attention to paragraph 32. However, most of it dealt with how the Alliance has reduced its enormous nuclear forces since the end of the Cold War; but said little on what it proposed for disarmament measures in the future. The section on "Confidence and security building measures with Russia" still presupposes a continuation of nuclear deterrence by attempting to muzzle the recklessly dangerous launch-on-warning policy still retained by both sides.

Recent letters from the FCO still maintain that "... we do not accept your suggestion that there is a ’substantial incompatibility between NATO’s Strategic Concept and the NPT Review Conference Final Document’ [letter to George Farebrother dated 4 Aug 2000] ... and " ... we do not start from the presumption that radical changes to our existing policies are required. We certainly do not subscribe to your view that the Review Conference outcome ’is a direct challenge to ... nuclear deterrence doctrine’" [letter to Robert Green dated 21 Nov 2000].

It is difficult for Trident Ploughshares to make sense of this position. The "unequivocal undertaking" by the nuclear weapon states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals is clearly contradicted by NATO nuclear policy, as expressed, for instance, in the NATO’s Strategic Concept where it is stated that "... the Alliance will maintain for the foreseeable future an appropriate mix of nuclear and conventional forces based in Europe ... Nuclear weapons make a unique contribution in rendering the risks of aggression against the Alliance incalculable and unacceptable. Thus, they remain essential to preserve peace." Such statements unambiguously demonstrate that, for the foreseeable future, NATO is not committed to rejecting the nuclear weapons assigned to it.

The same applies to UK thinking. Stephen Willmer’s letter tells us that sub-strategic weapons might be used "... in an extreme circumstance of self-defence to persuade an aggressor to cease his aggression by sending a limited but unambiguous political signal that he had miscalculated the resolve of the United Kingdom to defend itself and its Allies". This takes advantage of paragraph 105F of the ICJ Advisory Opinion but does not recognise its full force. Any lawful use of nuclear weapons would also have to meet the criteria of international humanitarian law in terms of proportionality and discrimination; and the survival of the state would have to be under threat. When we read that nuclear weapons could be used " ...in the case of an invasion or any other attack on the United Kingdom, its dependent territories, its armed forces, its Allies, or on a State towards which it has a security commitment, carried out or sustained in alliance or association with a Nuclear Weapon State", the possibility of a nuclear response to a non-nuclear attack seems to be entertained. This would almost certainly be unlawful because indiscriminate and disproportionate. Furthermore the state survival criterion is not clearly met.

We welcome the UK’s acceptance of Operative Paragraph 18 in the "New Agenda" Resolution. We are not certain, however, that HMG still sees this as an unambiguous commitment to a nuclear weapons convention. A recent FCO letter states that, "For its part, the Government accepts that, logically, the process of nuclear disarmament will ultimately lead to a Nuclear Weapons Convention to ban nuclear weapons, just as biological and chemical weapons are respectively banned by the Biological and Chemical Weapons Conventions. But clearly any such agreement will build upon the developing framework of bilateral and multilateral arrangements in this area". This is fairly encouraging, but still suggests that a great deal of process and negotiation could stand in the way of a nuclear weapons convention. Words such as "ultimately" project it into the indefinite future. Are you committed to a Nuclear Weapons Convention now?

Some useful, if limited, indicators of the way the Alliance could be thinking can be found in a recent NATO Parliamentary Assembly resolution which urges the governments and parliaments of the Alliance’s member nations "to work towards elimination of tactical nuclear weapons; to work actively and with urgency on implementing the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the decisions taken during the Non-Proliferation Treaty review in May 2000 and to ensure that these commitments form part of the Alliance’s work after the conclusion of the study on options for arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation; and that the results of this review shall be published". The December ministerial meetings do not live up to this proposal.

We would like to stress that nuclear disarmament and arms control are not the same. Nuclear disarmament means progress towards a world in which there are no nuclear weapons. It means totally rejecting them, together with nuclear deterrence doctrine. Arms control means containing nuclear weapons. While arms control measures are essential steps along the way to disarmament and are therefore to be welcomed, they are not enough.

NATO statements refer mainly to arms control. The UK Strategic Defence Review contains much to commend it in such areas as transparency, control of fissile materials and reductions in Trident warheads and we welcome the UK’s support for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. However, these are still arms control measures. They are perfectly compatible with retaining nuclear deterrence indefinitely under a leaner and more sophisticated guise.

We would therefore like to return to the section of the NPT Programme of Action which requires that "The principle of irreversibility" is "to apply to nuclear disarmament, nuclear and other related arms control and reduction measures". Our understanding of irreversible measures is that they would make it increasingly difficult to use nuclear weapons or to depend on them for security. It is therefore closely linked with the Programme’s call for "A diminishing role for nuclear weapons in security policies to minimize the risk that these weapons will ever be used and to facilitate the process of their total elimination". Measures such as taking Trident missiles off alert, separating the warheads from the missiles and de-activating them, would go a long way towards convincing us that the UK is taking its disarmament obligations seriously and that we could consider a pause in our own disarmament actions. When will you back such measures?

Stephen Willmer’s letter dismisses such options. He said, "Other measures were considered in the Strategic Defence Review, but ruled out as creating new risks of escalation and instability that would undermine the stabilising role that our nuclear deterrent would otherwise play in a developing crisis. This would clearly be inconsistent with promotion of international stability".

Whilst accepting that disarmament must be carried out with some care we find this argument circular and self-contradictory. It presupposes the retention of nuclear weapons in order to eliminate them and, taken to its logical conclusion, would preclude any serious disarmament measures whatsoever. In the past, courageous unilateral measures, such as those leading up to the IMF Treaty, have resulted in genuine nuclear disarmament. We need more elucidation and clarification of government thinking on this issue. The time to take bold steps has arrived, bearing in mind Stephen Willmer’s comment that, "... the Government believes the circumstances in which the use of nuclear weapons might be considered by the United Kingdom are now extremely remote".

The Principle of Irreversibility also applies to the future of Britain’s nuclear deterrent. Trident will not last forever. The Strategic Defence Review retains the option of replacing it. Any such decision would have to be taken quite soon and would be contrary to both the NPT 2000 Review Conference Final Document and the New Agenda Resolution. Will you make an announcement that any such plans have now been abandoned?

In the meantime the practical situation has not changed. UK deployment of 100 kt nuclear warheads still threatens us all with an imminent nuclear catastrophe and represents a clear breach of international humanitarian law. Therefore, as responsible global citizens, we will continue with our efforts to disarm this ever-present danger on February 12^th at Faslane.

In peace and love,

Morag Balfour, Sylvia Boyes, Maggie Charnley, Alison Crane, Kirsty Gathergood, Andrew Gray, Helen Harris, David Heller, Sarah Lasenby, David Mackenzie, Brian Quail, Jane Tallents, Marjan Willemsen, Angie Zelter.

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