Nuclear Launch Detected

Britain's nuclear deterrent (Trident) is back on the list of 'hot topics' for the politicos. No new arguments have been introduced, no new figures provided, and no realistic alternative propositions proposed. Never-the-less the pro-nuke lobby once again has to defend Britain's final guarantee of its own independence. 

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In case anyone's not aware yet I'm very much pro-nuke. Nuclear weapons are, in the grand scheme of things, cheap, available and reliable. They have ushered in an almost unprecedented level of peace between the great nations of the world and limited conflicts to border squabbles or asymmetric conflicts.

But there are always detractors, and here's what they say;

Cost
What's most concerning about the cost of nuclear weapons is not the actual number, but how many people thing it’s vastly more than it actually is. I've talked to plenty of people who seem to be reasonable well informed who have some warped view that Trident takes up the vast majority of government spending, and it’s primarily spending on things like nuclear weapons which mean the bus services are underfunded and the education system is broken.

To set the record straight on this once and for all, the incumbent defence secretary recently priced Trident in at about 5-6% of the defence budget annually. Using the 2012 budget figures that’s about £2-£2.4 billion a year. That's a lot right? Well... yes and no... This is how that figure compares to some other areas of government spending on a per year basis;

£2 billion per year is:

4% of what we spend on debt interest
2.2% of spending on education
1.5% of the NHS' budget
*Less than 1% of welfare spending*

To put that last one in an alternative context, Trident delivers a 'gold standard' second strike, continuously-at-sea, ballistic missile system, creates around 7,000 jobs in the UK, supports significant investment in British naval companies and infrastructure... all for less than 0.3% of the total annual budget or less than 1% of what we, as a country, spend in welfare benefits.

Useless Weapons
For those perhaps unwilling to try and argue the costing of Trident, an alternative line of enquiry presents itself - to claim that nukes don't do anything, and therefore we don't need them. You can't prove that nuclear weapons are necessary because by their very nature they are preventative. It is difficult to find evidence of things that didn't happen.

This point then splits into two strands, 1.) We can't nuke the kind of enemies we are currently fighting, 2.) We wouldn't end up in a situation where we would want to nuke the people we can nuke.

So in turn,

1.) Nuking Somali Pirates
 Nuclear weapons are by their nature the strategic super-weapon of industrial warfare. They are designed and intended to wipe countries off the map, not specific people. In the current world of asymmetric warfare nukes are pretty useless.  You can't respond to five guys with an AK-47 in a $100 speedboat kidnapping some bank manager from Tunbridge Wells by wiping out half of sub-Saharan Africa (or at least you can but it would be somewhat overkill).

This argument holds water, in that it shows we shouldn't rely on nuclear weapons to the exclusion of everything else. But, you know what? We don't! Our nuclear arsenal only accounts for 5% of our defence spending, and we have plenty of other toys to deal with the current problems. If those alternative assets are proving insufficient that may be an argument in favour of increasing special forces funding or drone strike facilities, but it doesn't touch on industrial state total war in the slightest.

2.) We don't want to nuke Washington
The second argument is that why have nukes (designed to flatten industrial nations) when there aren't any industrial nations we are likely to be fighting? Although it might not look like it on the surface, this is actually one of the most compelling arguments in favour of nukes.  Remember - nukes are about STOPPING wars, not winning them. This is doubly true for systems like Trident which are intended, and touted as Second Strike (for those not familiar with Cold War terminology, First Strike weapons were intended to destroy an opponent's population, military and industrial centres, and completely annihilate their own nuclear weapons, both any retaliation could be mounted. Second Strike was designed to be able to respond regardless of the devastation caused by a First Strike weapon. Trident is very simple in this respective, at any given time we have at least one nuclear armed submarine on patrol somewhere in the world's ocean. It really doesn't matter how totally you wipe out Britain, that submarine will eventually get to you, and when it does you get wiped out in return.)

Instead of looking at the here-and-now in a vacuum, consider why we don't want to go around nuking other countries? Because since 1945 the nuclear armed powers of the world have known they have to work together. For thousands of years countries always had the option to just call up their troops and go quash someone over the border. That age of the world has ended (or at least between nuclear armed powers). Does anyone seriously think that without the threat of nuclear confrontations the US and Soviets would have avoided a war? Or the Soviets and Chinese? Or how about a resurgent British Empire, still basking in post-war territorial acquisitions and without the threat of nuclear weapons?

Europe has enjoyed seventy years of genuine peace. You can put this down to the EU, or the League of Nations, or everyone just being nice chaps. You can also put it down to the fact that a third great war in Europe would have ended up in a nuclear fireball extending from Poland to Wales that no one wanted. In practice it was probably a bit of all of those factors, but don't for a second dismiss the role played by nuclear weapons.

Ahh yes! Cry the disarmament committees, but now that we have stopped fighting, we are all getting along like good buddies, why keep the weapons? They've done their job, now lets stop paying for them. The counterfactual to this is fairly simple, and what happens when only one person is left with nukes? At that point what's to stop the wars happening all over again? Long shot? Maybe... worth spending a third of a per cent of our tax revenue on? I'd say yes.

(And just to consider - is human history really resplendent with examples of cultures, countries and peoples taking a step back from war just because they got along 30 years ago?)

Alternatives
As ever some people try to hedge. They want nuclear capabilities, but not something as ""expensive"" as Trident (no doubt so they can then go on to increase unemployment benefits by another half % above inflation to buy votes). The current front run seems to be some kind of Cruise missile system. I'm going to put it out there and say that sucks.

I found an estimate of Cruise at £5 billion, or a saving of £15 billion over the 10 year procurement cycle. That £1.5 billion a year represents about 3.75% of the defense budget, or 0.2% of the total government budget. Whether you consider that significant or not I supposedly depends on which areas of government spending you consider sacrosanct. Delivering a cost saving of 1% on the welfare budget would deliver bigger absolute savings, as would a 1.2% cost saving in the welfare budget. Personally I think a 1% saving in welfare seems more reasonable than a 75% reduction in the nuclear budget. Given this, along with the points above under 'Cost' I'd argue that the £15bn, over a 10 year cycle in which our government will spend  £6,380 billion is neither here nor there.

In terms on functionality then what are we losing?

The first is a continuous-at-sea resource, a Cruise replacement would only put to sea under normal operational conditions, and at times all nuclear armed submarines would be in dock simultaneously. This reduces the system as a credible threat to a rational opponent, and opens the door to a First Strike weapon capable of eliminating Britain, and her nuclear arsenal, without the risk of retaliation.
 Again, how 'likely' this is to occur is open to dispute, though where the country being wiped out in a nuclear attack is concerned I'm inclined to err on the side of certainty.

Next up Cruise itself is more open to being intercepted and 'shot down' than a like-for-like functionality with Trident. This is a similar problem to the point above, the more confident an opponent is that they can counter our Second Strike; the more likely they are to launch a First Strike. Is that risk really worth such a neglible cost saving?

The final point is an interesting one about ''accidently'' starting a nuclear war. One of the biggest worries about nuclear war is the pace it happens at. World War 2 took seven years, for at least 2 of which is was pretty obvious what the outcome would be. Iraq has been dragging on for 11 years. Leaders in these conflicts could take hours, even days, to formulate a response. The decision to retaliate against a nuclear strike may have to be taken in minutes, even seconds, and at those speeds there is a risk of it going wrong. Cruise increases that risk by making it difficult for a nuclear adversary to distinguish between a conventional Cruise missile with an explosive warhead, and a nuclear Cruise missile. Therefore, in the few seconds before impact, a leader may incorrectly assume a nuclear strike and respond in kind. Trident isn't entirely free from this risk, but at least the use of specific missiles and delivery systems, openly known by the other nuclear powers, reduces the risks of 'accidents'.

As a replacement then Cruise is less reliable, more prone to bringing about accidental nuclear war, and delivers a cost saving sufficient to keep the NHS running for 4 days a year. Hardly impressive.