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Nuclear Disarmament

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, for enabling us to have this important debate. I will focus on some of the ethical aspects. As your Lordships are aware, a major factor in the conduct of a just war is the principle of proportion, which is that, ""the harm done in the conduct of the war must never be greater than the harm done or the injustice caused by the aggression it is intended to restrain or remedy"." It might be thought that the use of nuclear weapons could never meet this criterion. But what of the possession of nuclear weapons with the possible threat of using them, the so-called mutual assured destruction policy? The then Bishop, Graham Leonard, reflecting on this question, maintained that the principle of proportion does not rule out the choice of a great good achieved at the risk of a great evil when the alternative is almost wholly evil. It is arguable that for the decades of the Cold War the possession of nuclear weapons in mutual assured destruction prevented a war between the great powers which would have been a catastrophe even if only conventional weapons had been used. However, the days of the Cold War are over. We might have got used to the possession of nuclear weapons and perhaps there are new generations that are not so aware of their destructive power. But we are not living in a world today where a massive Soviet army is threatening to roll into western Europe. That is not our "certain great evil", to which Graham Leonard referred and which made the possession of nuclear weapons arguably moral. That threat has gone, in our infinitely more complicated world, where threats to our security come from unexpected directions. In this world, it is difficult to see what the circumstances would be in which a British nuclear weapon could ever be used. If such use is inconceivable, the moral argument for their possession loses its force An argument might well be that it is precisely because the world is unpredictable that a responsible Government must keep all options open and have a minimum number of nuclear weapons as part of their defence capability. First, however, nuclear weapons are not cheap and it might seem that £20 billion or more—the estimated cost of the renewal of Trident—might achieve greater national security if it were spent on conventional arms. Secondly, the world always will be unpredictable, so we must ask, "If the time is not right to phase out nuclear weapons now, when will it be right?". If the answer for Britain is never, then it must be the same for every nation. To follow that logic drives a coach and horses through the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As your Lordships are well aware, that treaty was signed by UN nations in 1968 and is frequently reviewed. As we have heard, the next review meeting is in New York this coming May. It is basically an agreement between nations possessing nuclear weapons and those without them. In what is sometimes called the "grand bargain", under Article 2 of the treaty non-nuclear nations undertake not to seek to develop nuclear weapons, while under Article 6 nuclear nations undertake to pursue nuclear disarmament and a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control. Article 6 does not, however, establish any timetable for nuclear disarmament, nor does it prohibit maintenance or updating of existing capabilities. Perhaps it should have done, but it does not. The British Government have over the years reduced the scale and readiness of the Trident system and plan to reduce it further. The Government’s thinking of upgrading Trident while reducing the total number of its warheads might seem consistent with a strict legal interpretation of the NPT, but it is hardly in its spirit or the ethical principles underpinning that spirit. Indeed, if nuclear nations upgrade their nuclear weaponry or seek to develop a new generation of smart nuclear weapons, they are hardly in a strong moral position to argue that non-nuclear nations should not seek to develop them. Both elements in the NPT need to be honoured if the world is to become a safer place. The fact that in the past few years we have seen a clutch of new nuclear states, among them Pakistan, India, North Korea and possibly Israel, with Iran on the horizon, does not add to our confidence. May 2010, when the next NPT review is to take place, will soon be here. Five years ago I attended the previous review on behalf of the World Council of Churches. I found it a most depressing experience, with day after day of debate being lost in procedural wrangling. However, the international political environment seems surprisingly more positive today than it was five years ago. The development of civil nuclear power in the face of climate change is certain to spread to many new countries in the coming years, extending knowledge and expertise in nuclear technology. It is not only Iran that will be a source of anxiety, so the need to deliver on the grand bargain of the NPT becomes ever more urgent, particularly as there is an increasing potential for fissile material to fall into the hands of those who would seek to use it for acts of terrorism. I trust that the NPT conference next May will be a major step on the road to nuclear disarmament and that Her Majesty’s Government will give the conference every encouragement and support and be prepared to make bold initiatives to seek to unblock the nuclear logjam.