Government and Military

Dear Tony Blair,

It has been 18 months since we last wrote to you of our continuing concerns about British nuclear policy and the deployment of Trident. During that time, in the absence of any constructive disarmament by your Government we have been continuing our campaign of people’s disarmament. Some 250 people have taken personal responsibility for participating in Trident Ploughshares disarmament activities at Aldermaston, Burghfield, Devonport, Faslane, Lakenheath, Leuchars and Rugby. They have been involved in disarmament work as diverse as blockading, fence cutting, swimming into high security areas, and citizen’s nuclear weapons inspections.

More recently, in the last year, we have found many more individuals throughout Britain willing to protest nonviolently against your policy of joining the Bush administration in going to war and occupying Iraq and consequently there have been some other major physical disarmament of support vehicles and aeroplanes being used in the illegal war against Iraq.

Since the beginning of our Trident Ploughshares Campaign (from August 1998) there have been a total of 2067 arrests, 447 trials, 2069 days spent in prison, and a total £67,436.50p worth of fines imposed. Although Trident Ploughshares Pledgers continue to be harassed and punished by the British criminal justice system, we still continue to believe that it is we who are law-abiding and acting in the best interests of British security and the world community. We will not be put off from doing this work until the Government takes over and makes substantial progress on real disarmament. The War against Iraq and Concerns about WMD in the UK

British people are deeply concerned about terrorism, weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and threats to the international rule of law, whether such threats and attacks come from a country’s government or from freelance terrorists or groups. In regard to these threats we support efforts to provide much better health and education resources and make sure that emergency planning and provision is better equipped to deal with and, hopefully, minimise damage and loss of life in the event of an attack. However, while planning and emergency preparations could make a significant difference if chemical, biological or radiological weapons were used, the only thing which can reduce the harm from a nuclear weapon is to ensure that they are never used.

Biological, toxin and chemical weapons are already banned by treaties that Britain has signed and ratified, and we urge you to work with the United Nations and the parties to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to strengthen and universalise these treaties. However, until nuclear weapons are unequivocally banned and eliminated, it is too easy for countries to keep open the option to deploy and use nuclear weapons, as Britain does. The present situation of nuclear haves and have-nots under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is dangerous and destabilising for international and regional security. How can we put pressure on other countries to give up their nuclear weapons or programmes if Britain continues to claim that nuclear weapons are needed to guarantee our security? Britain should be at the forefront of international pressure to underpin the nuclear non-proliferation regime with a more far-reaching, stringent and verifiable Nuclear Weapons Convention.

We find it painfully ironic that after ignoring our arguments about the dangers of WMD for so many years, you used public fears about nuclear, chemical and biological weapons to whip up support for war on Iraq. Unlike Britain with its arsenal of 150-200 nuclear weapons, it is clear that Iraq no longer presented a WMD threat. As the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and most of your intelligence sources told you, Saddam Hussein’s clandestine nuclear programme had been fully dismantled by the IAEA and UNSCOM in the early 1990s. After UNMOVIC regained access to Iraq in 2002, the team of inspectors headed by Hans Blix confirmed this and were in the middle of their painstaking job of investigating whether Iraq had managed to reconstitute the biological and chemical weapons programmes uncovered and dismantled by UNSCOM between 1991 and 1998, when you pre-empted their findings and launched your war in March 2003.

We write to you as citizens who have consistently, over many years, opposed the development, testing, deployment, use and threat of use of all weapons of mass destruction. We were never apologists for Saddam Hussein’s development of WMD and were among the first to condemn his regime’s atrocities, including the use of chemical weapons in the 1980s. We also opposed the sale of arms to the regime. In opposing the war, we believed that a more intelligent use of diplomacy and inspections would have stood a better chance of resolving questions about Saddam’s WMD capabilities and intentions, and that alternative international strategies to those pursued by the US, UK and others over the past two decades would have been more effective in empowering the Iraqi people to cut the stranglehold Saddam’s regime had on their lives. Most of all, we have been appalled by your disregarding of intelligence and advice that conflicted with the US war drive and your cynical hyping of fears about terrorism and WMD to justify Britain’s role in promoting this war and participating in acts of state-sponsored violence that have now cost at the very least 8,100 Iraqi lives. Illegality of British Nuclear Policies

Although nuclear weapons are not yet banned, British nuclear policy contravenes international laws and norms in several respects. In May 2000, together with the other four declared nuclear weapon powers and more than 180 countries that have renounced nuclear weapons, Britain adopted a plan of action for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, consisting of 13 specific principles and measures. These included pledges on the comprehensive test ban treaty, a fissile materials production ban, further unilateral reductions in nuclear arsenals, verification, diminishing the role and operational status of nuclear weapons, and application of the principles of transparency and irreversibility. Most importantly, this government agreed an "unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament".

Nearly four years later, instead of progress towards fulfilling these binding undertakings that form part of the legal and political obligations under the NPT, we see non-compliance by the nuclear weapon states, including Britain. We were appalled to hear UK policy represented to NPT Parties in April 2003 as follows: "The UK has reduced its reliance on nuclear weapons to a single system - Trident - at the minimum level necessary for the UK’s national security. We continue to encourage mutual, balanced and verifiable reductions in the numbers of nuclear weapons world-wide. And when we are satisfied that sufficient progress has been made that would allow us to include the UK’s nuclear weapons in multilateral negotiations, without endangering our security interests, we will do so."

This barely updates UK policies from the Cold War. The statement greatly disappointed other NPT Parties, who interpreted it as Britain reneging on the agreements adopted in 2000.

We do not accept that a force of 4 Trident submarines equipped with up to 200 nuclear warheads is necessary for British security, let alone that it could be portrayed as ‘the minimum level necessary’, when 182 nations have decided that there is no necessity for nuclear weapons at all. If zero nuclear weapons are the minimum necessary for the security of most of the world, on what basis do you calculate that this Western European island requires a minimum of four nuclear armed submarines? In view of the fact that the vast majority of nations have developed security arrangements without nuclear weapons (and the United States considers itself to be unprecedentedly insecure and vulnerable while possessing the largest and most sophisticated nuclear arsenal on earth), on what grounds do you continue to assert that joining negotiations to rid the world of nuclear weapons would endanger our security interests? We cannot see this. If you have arguments to substantiate this assertion, we would be keen to hear them.

Moreover, if Trident were essential for our security, how would it be used? It is widely recognised that nuclear weapons do not deter terrorists. Nor could terrorists develop the infrastructure to make them, although as long as such weapons exist, they do run the risk of being stolen. This makes a comprehensive treaty prohibiting and eliminating the weapons under strict and effective international control an even more urgent priority.

In the absence of a treaty banning nuclear weapons, the major applicable instruments of international law are the NPT, customary law and humanitarian law, which were all deemed relevant by the July 1996 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons. Looking at all the circumstances relating to the destructive power of Trident’s 100kt warheads, the doctrine of first use and deterrence ambiguity, current deployment policies (even on reduced notice to fire), NATO targeting strategies and objectives, command and control and so on, legal and technical experts have shown that Trident’s deployment contravenes international law.

Government statements illustrate confusion on this question. On July 27, 2001, John Spellar, Minister of State at the MoD, wrote to Alan Keen MP that "the ICJ confirmed that the legality of the threat of use, or use, of nuclear weapons is governed by the same laws of war as determine the legality of any other form of weapons not specifically prohibited under international law.... In light of the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion the Government continues to believe that its minimum nuclear deterrent is entirely consistent with international law." On March 25, 2001, Dr. Lewis Moonie, then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence, stated in a letter to Dr Kim Howells MP that all weapons are subject to International Humanitarian Law, which "requires that weapons be used during armed conflict in a discriminate manner". He continued:

"nuclear, biological and chemical weapons are indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction specifically designed to incapacitate or kill large numbers of people." In undertaking our nonviolent actions to disarm Trident, Trident Ploughshares Pledgers share Dr Moonie’s recognition that since they cannot be used in a discriminate manner, nuclear weapons contravene International Humanitarian Law. Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

British nuclear policy also contains contradictions. The December 2003 Defence White Paper, entitled "Delivering Security in a Changed World" states that Britain is "committed to working towards a safer world in which there is no requirement for nuclear weapons". It then undermines this laudable commitment by reiterating that Trident "is likely to remain a necessary element of our security". Britain’s statement to the 2003 NPT PrepCom made further steps on nuclear disarmament contingent on "sufficient progress", but what does this mean? The end of the cold war saw deep reductions in most arsenals mostly through US-Russian agreements, accompanied by unilateral reductions, especially of tactical weapons, by Britain and France. Although we are concerned that the Moscow Treaty reducing US and Russian strategic forces does not require that the weapons be verifiably and irreversibly destroyed, Her Majesty’s Government has hailed this agreement as important progress. If these reductions are not sufficient for Britain to engage in multilateral negotiations, what level of ‘sufficient progress’ are you waiting for?

The Defence White Paper cites the "continuing risk from the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the certainty that a number of other countries will retain substantial nuclear arsenals". Iraq’s nuclear programme was forcibly dismantled in the early 1990s. Iran and Libya were revealed to have undeclared uranium enrichment programmes. These were a long way from weapons scale, but they were clandestine and so violated those countries’ safeguards agreements under the NPT. As a result of the exposure, the programmes have been suspended and will soon be dismantled under international surveillance. North Korea continues to pose a difficult challenge for non-proliferation, but one that astute diplomacy will solve. Is it the Government’s contention that Britain’s continued deployment of Trident has played a role in preventing or addressing these proliferation threats? Such a claim would be nonsense.

The three nuclear weapon possessors outside the NPT, India, Israel and Pakistan, are in regions of instability where their nuclear weapons certainly pose a grave threat to regional and, potentially, international security. In this context, Britain’s possession and deployment of Trident is at best irrelevant and at worst adds to the international community’s difficulties in undermining the rationale for such nuclear forces. As regards the five declared nuclear weapon states - Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States - the only way in which Trident would conceivably contribute to our national security in relation to these is if we started the ball rolling towards zero by decommissioning it. The circular argument embedded in the Defence White Paper’s justification for retaining Trident would be ludicrous if it did not tragically serve to impede deeper thinking about our security, obstructing decisions that would actually help to shift the logjam and allow movement towards that safer world without nuclear weapons that this government talks about.

Non-compliance by nuclear weapon possessors with international law and treaty obligations is as serious for world security as the non-compliance of anyone else, including Iran and Libya, who were rightly condemned for concealing their early-stage research into uranium enrichment. Despite the rhetoric in the 1998 Strategic Defence Review and its ‘new chapter’ following the September 11 attacks in 2001, the UK seems afraid to adapt to the new, post cold war defence and security imperatives. How can British efforts to prevent the proliferation of WMD be taken seriously when Britain’s own policy on Trident provides dangerous justifications for acquiring or keeping nuclear weapons? If Britain sees "a continuing role of nuclear weapons as the ultimate guarantor of the UK’s national security", on what grounds do you try to dissuade India and Pakistan from building up their deadly arsenals, or others, such as North Korea, to give up their aspirations to acquire nuclear weapons? New Nuclear Weapon Research

We welcome the fact that through the work of some AWE scientists, Britain has been leading the way in researching verification techniques for nuclear disarmament, but we are concerned that those laudable programmes now seem to be winding down. The White Paper notes that decisions on whether to replace Trident are likely to be taken by the next Parliament. Until a decision on replacing Trident is taken, the White Paper insists that "the range of options for maintaining a nuclear deterrent capability is kept open".

Consistent with Britain’s legal obligations, there should be no question of replacing Trident. Designing and manufacturing a new generation of nuclear weapons is clearly incompatible with our unequivocal undertaking to eliminate nuclear arsenals, as well as contrary to the rest of the agreements adopted in May 2000.

We are particularly concerned about the £2 billion scheme to update Britain’s nuclear weapons infrastructure and build new laboratories associated with nuclear weapons research, design and testing at AWE Aldermaston, including a new materials-testing laser and associated labs, hydrodynamics facility and supercomputer. During the past 18 months, collaboration between AWE scientists and the US nuclear laboratories has been noticeably stepped up, and in international circles there is growing anxiety that despite ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty early in 1997, Britain is beginning to hedge its bets, in the knowledge that the US would be prepared to make the Nevada test site available for British nuclear tests if the CTBT were killed off. Far from letting the MoD lick its lips at the prospect of conducting nuclear explosions again, Britain should do its utmost to prevent the United States from wrecking this important treaty

The Bush administration’s desire to develop smaller, flexible, more usable nuclear weapons is well known. Since taking power in 2001, the Bush administration has repeatedly voted and spoken against the CTBT in the UN First Committee and during meetings of the NPT. Its attitude, epitomised by the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review and National Security Strategy, is to keep all its options open. In response to the question "what are the warhead characteristics and advanced concepts we will need in the post-NPR environment", the US nuclear weapons laboratories spent 2003 analysing requirements for "low yield weapons, earth penetrating weapons, enhanced radiation weapons, agent defeat weapons". Their considerations included the "testing strategy for weapons more likely to be used in small strikes". These US plans would breach international law and treaty undertakings and are profoundly destabilising and counterproductive for international non-proliferation and security objectives. It is imperative that you clearly demonstrate that Britain will neither support, follow, nor seek to benefit from these irresponsible nuclear proliferation policies.

The White Paper’s statement about keeping options open means in practice that research and planning is in hand for new weapon development. Keeping all options open is a dangerous and expensive policy that contributes nothing to our security while negating our ability to eliminate nuclear dangers. It represents a failure to get off the treadmill on which successive governments, scientists and engineers have trodden automatically and on which they will continue to tread until a clear decision to close off the option of replacing Trident is made. A clear decision not to replace Trident is what is required now. This needs to be accompanied by steps to withdraw and dismantle Trident, together with the reconfiguration of AWE for the sole purposes of ensuring the safe dismantlement of the weapons, secure disposal of the materials and technical verification of nuclear disarmament. Scotland rejects Trident

Trident is currently based in Scotland, at Faslane, against the wishes of the majority of Scottish people. We draw your attention to the Report of the Committee on Church and Nation of the Church of Scotland, 2003. This condemned the "wasteful £1.5 billion" spent annually to maintain Trident and the UK nuclear weapons infrastructure, and stated: "The consistent view of the General Assembly is that Trident should be abandoned and that it should not be replaced." [paragraph 7.3]

After carefully considering the national and international aspects of nuclear weapons from all angles, the report argued that "By possessing nuclear weapons, a nation is basing its relationship with neighbouring countries on a threat. There would be no point in a country having nuclear weapons unless it was prepared to use them and so the deterrence strategy has as its basis a conditional intention to commit an evil act. Jesus Christ taught people to love their neighbours and it is therefore a travesty of his teachings that nations can threaten to annihilate one another by possessing such weapons." [paragraph 8.3]

It concluded: "The Church of Scotland firmly believes that there is a moral imperative on all humanity to eliminate nuclear weapons from the face of our planet. The appalling destructive nature of these weapons, the potential they have to destroy God’s creative order and the suspicion, distrust and terror which they bring to human relationships must all act as incentives to overcome the political and practical obstacles which lie in the way of complete nuclear disarmament." [paragraph 9.11]

For moral, legal and security reasons, Britain needs to get out of the nuclear weapons business and join those who are doing their utmost to eliminate all nuclear dangers. Trident Ploughshares Pledgers are amongst those trying to uphold international law by disarming UK WMD and in accordance with our open, accountable and non-violent principles we have enclosed a full list of the current 209 Pledgers.

We end this Open Letter by once again inviting you to assent to a face-to-face meeting where we can urgently discuss Britain’s role in nuclear disarmament.

In peace and love,

Angie Zelter for Trident Ploughshares

Current Core Group of Trident Ploughshares:- Morag Balfour, Lyn Bliss, Maggie Charnley, Adam Conway, Alison Crane, Andrew Gray, David Heller,Ere Itkonen, Margaret Jones, Sarah Lasenby, David Mackenzie, Paul Milling, Rachael Milling, Dave Rolstone, Gillian Sloan, Jane Tallents

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