Tactical Nuclear Weapons and NATO.pdf - Program on Strategic ...

argue that there was no serious debate when the original
decision to go ahead with a renewal of the Trident
force was made by the previous Labour government
under Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2006. Whether
such a debate is a realistic possibility may be open
to doubt, since it is questionable whether any of the
mainstream UK parties would be willing to take it on.
But were it to start simmering, the current British government
may become a little nervous if there were to
be an ongoing <strong>and</strong> potentially quite fractious debate
under way within <strong>NATO</strong> about the future of nuclear
weapons in the rest of Europe.
The underlying UK government rationale for pursuing
a new generation of strategic nuclear weapons is
as an insurance policy <strong>and</strong> a hedge against the uncertainty
of what the threats will be in the decades ahead.
In that sense, it remains wedded to the fundamentals
of nuclear deterrence. But some even within the British
military establishment have questioned whether
the cost of what is being contemplated for the future is
proportionate to the likely risk. That argument could
find echoes in how <strong>NATO</strong> contemplates the cost of
retaining forward-deployed nuclear weapons in Europe.
Quite simply, do the potential risks justify the
potential scale of future budgetary commitments?
At the same time it is keeping faith with the nuclear
deterrence rationale, the British government has also
been interested in exploring how to renew the broad
application of deterrence to conventional capabilities
in the modern world, in part to help sustain the rationale
for continuing to invest in certain aspects of
its conventional armed forces. How these two str<strong>and</strong>s
of future deterrence will be balanced has a bearing
not only on the shape <strong>and</strong> character of the UK armed
forces in the long run, but also possibly on London’s
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