By John Krzyzaniak, December 4, 2019
It would be easy to miss from this side of the pond, but there’s a parliamentary election coming up in the United Kingdom on December 12. Last week, the BBC held a seven-way debate, pitting senior representatives from the major parties against one another. The debate moderator posed a seemingly straightforward question about nuclear policy, asking, “If our country was under nuclear attack, would you (or the leader of your party) use our nuclear weapons to defend our country?” Four participants said yes—but three said no.
Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party, gave the most noteworthy answer. Her response was: “No. Absolutely and emphatically not, because it would lead to the deaths of possibly tens of millions of people and wipe out swaths of our civilization. So no, under no circumstances would I use nuclear weapons.”
For an American, to hear this coming out of a politician’s mouth might be a bit shocking. Why?
First, in the United States, the current political debate on nuclear use is very different. Some 2020 presidential candidates, such as Elizabeth Warren, are advocating a no-first-use policy, which says the United States would never be the one to initiate a nuclear war. This would be a change from current US policy; there are smart arguments on both sides. But no candidate is questioning whether the president should launch a retaliatory attack if another country initiates a nuclear war against the United States.
Second, taking retaliation off the table would appear to fly in the face of deterrence theory. By definition, deterrence requires a threat of credible retaliation. By declaring “absolutely and emphatically” that there would be no retaliation, Sturgeon seems to be undermining deterrence, which is arguably the whole point of having nuclear weapons in the first place.
So what gives? Steven E. Miller, director of Harvard’s International Security Program and a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board, thinks there may be a few plausible explanations. One answer lies in NATO. The British nuclear force is a small component of the larger NATO deterrence system. So a politician in the United Kingdom could forswear retaliation without undermining deterrence, because the US doctrine, under which the United States would respond to any military attack on the United Kingdom, would remain intact. Better to let the Americans do the dirty work.
Another explanation could be that retaliation would be strategically disastrous. If the United Kingdom were to come under nuclear attack from Russia, its own retaliation options would not be good. They would not have enough nuclear weapons to knock out all of Russia’s, so any retaliation would probably be aimed at Russian cities. And such an attack would almost certainly prompt an even larger Russian nuclear attack against British cities.
A third answer might be that, from the British perspective, there is nothing to deter. If a large-scale war caused by Russian aggression is inconceivable, then deterrence and retaliation are irrelevant. That’s hard to buy though, since on the continent, European leaders are seeing a greater need for nuclear deterrence, not a lesser one.
Perhaps the best explanation, however, is not strategic, but political. Although a majority of British citizens support nuclear weapons, a consistent minority has long opposed having or using them. So Nicola Sturgeon might just be telling her base what they want to hear.
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Hello From Scotland.. In Fact, From the Clyde.. Just to fill you in, Nicola, and 50% of Scots are fighting for an Independent Scotland.. And Nuclear WMD free Scotland.. Whilst maybe just over 50% of Scots want Independence.. The Vast majority of us want WMD's out of the Clyde ...It's Not a Flippant issue to Scotland.
Another answer might be that Nicola Sturgeon is not prepared to commit the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians by launching a nuclear attack, and has the principles to say so, and that she is genuinely committed to nuclear disarmament and achieving a world without nuclear weapons.
Hi John,
You're quite right in saying that the British debate is quite different from the US debate. I think, however, you might be looking for 'rational' strategic reasons for these positions, when not everything can be seen through this lens, and in fact they instead come down to morality, first, and secondly to politics.
The Green Party, SNP and Plaid Cymru parties and memberships have longstanding moral objections to nuclear weapons, representing a significant constituency within the United Kingdom that has a deeply-held discomfort about nuclear weapons possession. Their response to this question has to be all the more absolute because of the stir that Prime Minister May and her Defence Secretary Michael Fallon caused when they answered in the affirmative to the same question in the 2016 Trident debate (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/18/theresa-may-takes-aim-at-jeremy-corbyn-over-trident-renewal).
Both sides of the debate obviously consider themselves moral actors, and the reason they come to different answers is principally, I think, down to working with two different systems of ethics. Both Republicans and Democrats, and the larger British parties (Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems), tend to argue on consequentialist grounds ('the peace-enforcing ends of deterrence justify the means'). The smaller parties are more positional ('nuclear weapons are inherently immoral objects due to their humanitarian consequences') – a luxury afforded to smaller parties that larger ones have a harder time justifying. Neither of these ethical systems are 'right,' and the constituencies they speak to will each go away from this debate with their biases confirmed.
Sadly, the British nuclear weapons debate is sorely broken. Politicians are framed either as 'unilateralist' or 'multilateralist' disarmers, with both sides calling the other naive, which stymies opportunities for cross-party collaboration or leadership through the reproduction of this binary. All but one serving Conservative party politician (Crispin Blunt MP) would call themselves a multilateralist, though how many truly believe in disarmament is hard to say. About 2/3 of Labour are 'multilateralists' too (and how many of them?), while the other 1/3 are 'unilateralists.' Whenever Trident comes up, the Conservative party uses it effectively as a wedge to split the Labour party and create internal acrimony. The number of politicians here that have any depth of knowledge on these issues represent a small fraction of the houses, so whenever a vote comes along the same old arguments are trotted out on party lines.
Finally, for the SNP / Nicola Sturgeon, opposition to nuclear weapons comes hand-in-hand with their policy of getting the Trident submarine base out of Scotland with independence. That's a very sticky issue for Westminster, since there are no viable other deepwater ports to put them in (https://basicint.org/news/2016/voting-trident-scotland-question-settled-illogical). Note, however, that the SNP is committed to NATO membership – so your argument about passing the buck may have some salience in that regard.
Brit at your service, happy to chat more!
Sebastian