A British View on the US – Russian Strategic Arms Control Process

As a first step one would need to define what is meant by engaging the UK in the arms control, disarmament & nuclear non-proliferation process taking place between the US and Russia. The UK’s case in the arms control, disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation process is a complicated one because of the 1958 & 1959 US-UK Mutual Defence Agreements (MDA), and the complications arising from the manner in which the UK nuclear force would also be assigned to NATO under the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) as well as those specific circumstances in which the UK would have to think of the possibility of using its own nuclear forces independently of the US or NATO in order to make its own nuclear deterrent force credible in the eyes of Russia or any other adversary. These two issues (i.e. 1. UK nuclear contribution to NATO and 2. UK-US relationship) are the major factors which would make a decision on Trident and its modernisation or upgrade complicated and difficult for the UK. The third complicating factor is the UK obligations under the NPT to work towards disarmament and the impact of such disarmament obligation in its decision to update Trident.

 

Apart from the above political and arms control considerations, the UK would have to address the complicated technical issues of what would be the shape of a credible minimum deterrent nuclear force in the eyes of Russia and at the same time in the eyes of the UK’s own political and military establishment. The whole question of whether the UK’s operational nuclear deterrent capability (i.e. its continuous at sea deterrent (CASD)) would be credible has been doubtful since 1960s. Doubts over this issue (i.e. circumstances in which the UK may have to use nuclear weapons on its own without US or NATO contribution) has been in the minds of the UK political and military establishment since 1960s and it is not a new concern related to the present Trident nuclear weapon system.

 

Moreover, there is the additional complications of the rapid advancement in conventional weapon technology which the US and China and probably Russia, as a more economically powerful countries, would be able to afford to invest but the UK in the current global economic problems would not be able to afford to engage with such rapid and costly conventional modernizations, in the long term.

 

Of course, the UK officials have argued over the last couple of decades that they have been involved in arms control negotiations especially in the confidence building part of it more than any other country by encouraging verification of the P5 nuclear disarmament projects, and also by putting forward and engaging in disarmament talks at top level in the last few years. The UK officials have also pointed out to the following examples of unilateral decommissioning and dismantling of atomic gravity bombs as the UK contributions to disarmament since the end of the Cold War, which has included decommissioning of

1. 50 RAF 10 Kiloton gravity bombs (WE177A),

 

2. 43 Royal Navy nuclear bombs (WE177As), and

 

3. 125 (200 kiliton) WE1 77CS

 

However, at the present time, the UK’s official position is that if it had to make any further significant numerical reductions to its ‘minimum deterrent’ nuclear weapon systems capability, it would have to change its whole nuclear doctrine. Some suggestions have been made in relation to using lower yield of nuclear weapons instead of number of warheads or missile or weapon system as a means of measuring what nuclear disarmament would mean. But this would also have its own problems due to the fact that the states would not be prepared to disclose the details of their operational nuclear weapons in terms of yields etc.