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Armed Forces: Nuclear Deterrent

My Lords, my contribution will cover the future of the UK’s nuclear deterrent from the angle of considering the implications of the Government’s proposals, their preferred course of action, as set out in the White Paper, for the nuclear non-proliferation regime as a whole, and their compatibility with our commitments as a signatory and depository of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. My first point is that the non-proliferation treaty has turned out to be a far more durable and effective instrument of international law than was originally expected when it first entered into force some 40 years ago; it has worked very much in the national interest of this country. In place of the 20 to 30 nuclear-weapons states predicted at that time, there are only eight or nine, depending on how you choose to score North Korea. They are the five countries which were nuclear-weapons states and recognised as such when the treaty was signed, which are the five permanent members of the Security Council, and the three countries that never signed the non-proliferation treaty and are generally assumed to have nuclear weapons—India, Israel and Pakistan. During those 40 years, it has proved possible to roll back nuclear weapons programmes in South Africa, Libya and Iraq, to persuade several countries formerly part of the Soviet Union to pass up the opportunity to retain nuclear weapons—Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine—and to persuade other countries, such as Argentina and Brazil, to forego nuclear research programmes which could have had weapons implications. My second point cuts right across the first: the non-proliferation treaty regime is now under greater threat than it has ever been before from a number of different angles, most obviously from North Korea’s defiance of its treaty obligations and from Iran’s refusal, so far, to take the necessary steps to convince the international community that its clandestine uranium enrichment and other activities are not designed to provide a short cut to a weapons programme. It is also under threat from tensions arising out of the existence of the three non-signatory de facto possessors of nuclear weapons: India, because of the not very satisfactory bilateral agreement entered into by the US last year; Pakistan, because of the supposedly freelance activities of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan; and Israel, because of the ever worsening situation in the Middle East. Then there is the failure of the five nuclear-weapons states to make much or, in some cases, any progress towards nuclear disarmament and to fulfil the 13-step programme to which they committed themselves at the NPT Review Conference in 2000. It is the last of those three shortcomings which is most germane to our debate today. To what extent can the Government's proposals be considered as conforming to the commitments that we gave? Clearly, the reduction in the ceiling on the number of warheads, from 200 to 160, can be presented as progress towards nuclear disarmament, but could we not manage to maintain deterrence at a lower level of warheads than that? The same point could be made if there were to be a reduction in the submarine fleet from four to three, but that is not certain. It should surely become so, especially since the hair-trigger standby arrangements needed during the Cold War are no longer justifiable. What is less easy to defend is deciding on Trident replacement earlier than is strictly speaking necessary, at a time of great fragility for the NPT regime as a whole. Britain's interest in and obligations towards the non-proliferation treaty do not stop with the future of its own nuclear deterrent; they extend to reversing recent trends towards a weakening and perhaps even a collapse of that regime. That trend was most evident in 2005, when two attempts to strengthen the regime led to deadlock both at the NPT Review Conference in May and at the UN summit in September. For that trend to be reversed, the following six steps need to be taken as a matter of urgency. First, there needs to be strong renewed pressure to bring into effect the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. That will mean persuading the United States to look again at its refusal to ratify the treaty. Secondly, all the recognised nuclear-weapons states should resume implementation of the 13 steps to which they committed themselves in 2000. Thirdly, negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty should be engaged in and brought to an early successful conclusion. Fourthly, all countries with safeguard agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency should accept and ratify the agency’s additional protocol. If, within a certain period, that is not done, the Security Council should adopt a Chapter VII resolution making that a mandatory requirement. Fifthly, negotiations at the IAEA to establish an internationally guaranteed system for the supply of enriched uranium and spent fuel reprocessing available to all civil nuclear users whose safeguards are in good standing should be completed in 2007. That should be matched by a voluntary and possibly time-limited moratorium on the construction of further enrichment and reprocessing facilities. Sixthly, it should be made clear that the establishment of nuclear weapons-free zones—in the Middle East, in particular—remains an integral part of any peace process. It is evident that those six steps would not of themselves present solutions to the hard cases of North Korea and Iran but they would greatly increase the pressure all round on those two countries to come into line with the requests made of them by the Security Council. In any event, the fragility of the non-proliferation treaty will not be remedied simply by finding bilateral fixes to those two hard cases; that also requires the strengthening of the multilateral disciplines that underpin the regime. Strengthening those disciplines would also reassure North Korea and Iran that they were not being picked on as isolated cases but were merely being asked to accept the same disciplines as other non-nuclear weapons states. As for the two hard cases of North Korea and Iran, we must recognise that Britain and its European partners have a less prominent role to play in the former than the latter. The six-nation group dealing with the North Korean issue clearly needs to remain the main focus of international diplomacy and those outside that group need to give the process strong support. On Iran, we are, with our EU partners, a member of the core group handling the matter. Currently there is a stand-off, with no talks let alone negotiations taking place. The sanctions decided by the Security Council are likely soon to come into effect, justifiably so if Iran makes no move to comply with the requests put to it unanimously by the Security Council. But should we not then seek to resume dialogue with Iran without making any preconditions? Should we not also be telling our US partners that the discrepancy between their willingness to talk bilaterally and without preconditions to North Korea and their refusal to do so with Iran is increasingly difficult to justify and defend, whatever one may think of the policies of the Iranian Government? We must ask ourselves one question that relates directly to today’s debate: does Britain's decision on Trident make it more difficult to handle the cases of North Korea and Iran? Or, to put it another way, would our abandoning Trident be likely to provide effective leverage on those two countries? I think that the answer is no to both questions. Neither country is motivated to any significant extent by Britain's nuclear status, which both accepted when they signed the non-proliferation treaty. Neither, unfortunately, would be likely to be swayed by a unilateral decision on our part to abandon that status. I hope that the Minister will be able to indicate in his winding-up speech whether the Government support the broad ideas and the six steps that I have proposed, or some variant of them. If they support such an approach, would it not be timely for either the Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary at an early date to set out in a public speech the British Government’s overall position on nuclear non-proliferation and thus to make clear that, in taking this decision on Trident, they intend not only to continue to fulfil the commitment to move towards nuclear disarmament but to step up their effective support for strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation treaty regime? Would it not also be timely for similar support to be forthcoming from this year’s G8 summit in Germany, and for the British Government to take an early initiative to bring that about? The problem with the nuclear non-proliferation issue is that it is complex, technical and poorly understood. Yet few areas of policy are more vital to peace and security in the 21st century. Surely it is high time that political leaders moved it higher up their common agenda and explained it to their electorates in terms more easily understood than those hitherto employed. The two-minutes-forward tick of the Doomsday clock may be a crude way of doing that, but it points the way towards greater urgency and a clearer understanding of what is at stake.