THE TROUBLE WITH TRIDENT

Britain is about to get a new and bigger bomb.

Timothy Garton Ash questions the choice which

Mrs Thatcher favours — and others fear

SOMEWHERE out there in the dark freezing depths of the North Atlantic ocean there is a huge metal tube full of smaller metal tubes, sophisticated gadgetry and a few men. This is a British submarine. It is called Revenge, Renown or Resolution (Repulse is in dock for a refit). Sixteen of the smaller tubes are engineered, with matchless human ingenuity, to kill, maim, deform, mutilate and bereave millions of other human beings. These are called Polaris missiles. To avoid detection, the submarine observes complete radio si- lence. Its patrol route is top secret. It does not surface for two to three months at a time.

Mrs Thatcher alone could decide that the missiles should be launched. To send the order to the submarine, however, she would require the co-operation of at least one Chief of Staff, and the military and civil servants who hold the relevant codes. To fire a missile, the submarine captain has to keep a key inserted in a box, like the till girl on a supermarket check-out. But he, too, needs the active co-operation of at least one other senior officer. If they have reason to believe that Britain has been devastated by a nuclear attack, and there is no one left in London to send the order, these two officers are to consider firing the missiles on their own initiative.

At present, the targets for Polaris are assigned, as part of Nato's overall strategic planning, by a group based at the head- quarters of the US Strategic Air Command in Omaha, Nebraska. The group does include some British officers. These targets are, of course, secret, but it seems reason- able to assume that most of them lie in the Soviet Union. However, there is no tech- nical reason why a British government should not reassign the targets at will, or so we are assured by those in a position to know. We have our own Very Low Fre- quency radio communications with our submarines. Each boat carries its own `target tapes' for the missiles. So in theory there is nothing to stop us pointing the things, not at Moscow, Leningrad or Kiev, but at Tripoli, Buenos Aires or Omaha, Nebraska. This is what successive British govern- ments have described as our 'independent nuclear deterrent'. And if the present Government has its way, this is what we will still have in the next century: the same, only more so. The huge metal tube cruising in the Atlantic depths will be even larger 19 yards longer than Westminster Abbey. It will be smarter, smoother, quieter. It will no longer be called Resolution or Revenge. Perhaps it will be Pride or Pre- judice (with Power and Privilege in for refits). The smaller metal tubes will also be longer, sharper, deadlier. These new mis- siles will be called Trident, not Polaris. But the role ascribed to them will still be essentially the same.

And that role is . . .? As every essay on this subject begins by observing, before you can answer the question 'Why Tri- dent?' you have to ask 'Why a British nuclear deterrent at all?' For as an Amer- ican official expert in these matters observed to me in private conversation, the West Germans do not have their own deterrent, although — being on the front line with the Warsaw Pact — they would appear to need it more acutely than we do, and they can certainly afford it better than we can. Yet the West Germans, argued this American official, seem content to rely, in the last resort, on the American nuclear guarantee. Why should not Bri- tain? In his private view, the British nuclear deterrent really doesn't matter much, in global strategic terms; it is no more than a sparrow beside the American eagle. In truth, we retain it to conceal (mainly from ourselves) the collapse of British power in the world. National pride could not stomach our being the only non-nuclear-armed permanent member of the UN Security Council. Above all, the heirs of Wellington cannot tolerate the idea that the French might have what we do not.

One flaw in this argument is that the West Germans are patently not happy and content to rely on the American nuclear umbrella. Since Germans have started two world wars this century they don't trust themselves even to hold a second key to the new Wunderwaffen, a concern which they also suspect — not without justifica- tion — that some of their neighbours might share. But nor do they trust the Americans to commit suicide for the defence of West Germany. Indeed, one of the main reasons why we now have American cruise missiles at Greenham Common is that Helmut Schmidt asked for them back in 1977, demanding a further solid, visible token, on West European soil, of that extraordin- ary notional American commitment which is at the heart of Nato. And nowadays Helmut Schmidt is saying that West Ger- many should do its utmost to get under the French nuclear umbrella as well. The French force de dissuasion is, of course, the other European extreme. True to the vision of de Gaulle, France's nuc- lear forces are entirely French-designed, French-built, French-manned, French' controlled and French-targeted. They are constructed, with the purest Cartesian, logic, exclusively for the defence 0' France, and that against all corners, be they from East or West, North or South `a toutes azimutes' as de Gaulle put it in a famous phrase. For all the Germans know, ,French missiles may be targeted on Bonn and Berlin. For all we know, their sub" marines may be sent to patrol at exactly the same time in exactly the same waters as our own. Nato and the Americans have no" thing to do with any of it. This is Pure' 19th-century nationalism, and therefore universally popular, with the Left as much as the Right. The British position is a muddle some' where in between the French and the West German positions. Officially, our nuclear forces are described both as an indepen" dent nuclear deterrent' and as 'a contrihn" tion to Nato's nuclear deterrent'. In his excellent Britain and Nuclear Weapons On which I have leaned heavily), Professor Lawrence Freedman devotes some anins" ing pages to the verbal contortions with which successive Defence Secretaries have attempted plausibly to combine these two descriptions, without ever saying straight- forwardly the one thing that must be obvious to anyone with an IQ of more than 60, to wit: the biggest single reason for keeping these things is that we cannot trust the Americans to risk self-destruction for our sake in all the conceivable circum- stances in which the British Isles might be threatened with invasion or nuclear attack. And why on earth should they? (In this and all subsequent contexts 'The Americans' obviously refers, without prejudice, to government, rather than people.) difficult, but if they've also got to take into account ourselves and the French as well, it just makes it that hit more difficult.' His second argu- ment: 'Because of the fact that we have our 0Wri nuclear deterrent we have a much bigger and more effective role in peace negotiations than we would have if we didn't.' If we gave it up, 'we would be listened to politely but . . . we wouldn't be speaking from a position of strength.' He Confirmed that 'we have reserved the right' to use it for our own purposes in the case of an 'overwhelming national interest'. 'We have the right to do our own thing,' he said, 'and the ability.' (The language of rights is rather curious in this context.) But he was at pains to stress that the Americans and our other Nato allies are keen that we should keep our nuclear capability. Unlike Y Privately sceptical American official, CaP Weinberger and the senior people that I have talked to have gone out of their way to say how much they value our participation . . . .' Finally: 'Of course all sorts of things flow from it in terms of the closeness of our relationship with the Americans in much wider fields than just the actual Trident or Polaris system . . • •' A

special relationship, then. , In the homely language of a stout- hearted Tory, relatively new in the De- fence Secretary's office, and hence merci- fully un-fluent in the ghastly opaque jargon

of the strategic trade, Mr Younger gives an excellent idea of the real thinking behind the official formulae. If French thinking on their nuclear force is quintessentially Gaul- list, British thinking is fundamentally Churchillian. De Gaulle's formula for keeping France as a great power in the post-war world was: a nuclear-armed, purely national defence and national(ist) foreign policy plus 'Europe' — meaning, in the first place, West German economic co-operation and political support in return for French forgiveness. Churchill's formula for keeping Britain as a great power in the post-war world was: the remains of Empire plus a little 'Europe' plus a lot of 'special relationship' with the United States. For a quarter of a century until 1979, the last part of the Churchillian formula was implicitly adhered to — even clung to —, some

would say 'against all the evidence', by every British government, and by Labour governments even more than by Conserva- tives ones. Since 1979 it has been largely abandoned by the rump Labour Party, while the Alliance suggests we should put 'Europe' first. Only for Mrs Thatcher's Government does the 'special relationship' still apparently remain an article of faith.

But at the beginning of the British Trident story, back in 1977, it was a sub-committee of a Labour cabinet (the committee included Callaghan himself, Fred Mulley, David Owen and Denis Healey) which commissioned an expert group of officials, led by Sir Anthony Duff of the Foreign Office and Professor Ronald Mason of the Ministry of Defence, to consider the whole future of Britain's nuclear force. Working on the basic assumptions of the previous two decades, and apparently without a hard cost limit, the officials came up with an unsurprising answer: the best successor to the American Polaris system, they said, would be an American successor to the Polaris system — known as Trident (C4) or Trident I. (The technical hitches and soaring costs of our own British effort — code-named Chevaline — to improve the front half of our Polaris missiles had further inclined them towards an all-American answer.) When the Labour cabinet sub-committee considered these findings in November 1978, however, ministers also had before them a dissenting paper prepared at David Owen's behest in his Foreign Office think tank. This urged the merits of the new cruise missiles which the US navy was already testing in its submarines. But no decision was anyway to be made until after the next election, in which Callaghan would have got himself a mandate to go ahead with modernising our nuclear force — and therefore with Trident if need be. (Note the careful wording of Labour's 1979 manifesto.) Perhaps fortunately for the present credibility of Dr Owen and Mr Healey on this issue, the Callaghan govern- ment was not voted back to face it.

Instead, they be- queathed the Duff/ Mason findings (but presumably also, somewhere, the Owen/Foreign Office paper?) to a Conservative

cabinet sub- committee with the glamorous title of MISC-7, and in-

cluding Mrs Thatcher, Francis Pym, Lord Carring- ton and Sir Geof- frey Howe. The Government announced in July 1980 that Trident (C4) would replace Polaris as our 'independent nuclear deter- rent' in the 1990s. A year later, the Pentagon announced that it would phase out Trident (C4) in favour of a new, bigger and better Trident, known as D5, or Trident II. The British Government said: all right, we'll take that instead. And so we are.

On 4 March 1981 the Guardian reported that one Dr David Owen, 'presenting himself in the Commons as the defence and foreign affairs spokesman of the putative Social Democratic party', had fiercely criti- cised the Trident decision. Since then, Dr Owen has kept up a remarkable one-man campaign against the Trident programme, and in favour of a smaller, more national and more 'European' deterrent of submarine-launched cruise missiles. For the first part of his argument, at least, he has found an uncommonly sympathetic audience on both sides of the House, in the armed forces and among Reasonable Men.

The Reasonable Man's case against Tri- dent is that it is too big, too expensive and too American.

`Too big' is a matter of technical debate. Trident, like Polaris, is a so-called ballistic missile, that is to say a thing which you throw up into the heavens and which then

comes down under its own momentum and the force of gravity to hit Moscow, Kiev or wherever from above. A cruise missile is a kind of pilotless aircraft which steals along at very low altitude over hill and dale, twisting and turning at the behest of a fantastically sophisticated electronic guid- ance system, and thus aiming to take the enemy from below. When the Trident decision was being taken in 1978-80, cruise technology was in its adolescence, and the consensus of expert opinion remained strongly in favour of ballistic missiles. Lawrence Freedman points out that the French also rejected the cruise missile option at this time, and even the minority Labour group on the 1981 House of Com- mons Defence Committee wrote in their dissenting report, 'We accept the argu- ments for ballistic over cruise missiles.'

Since then, however, cruise missiles have apparently got better — faster, steal- thier, more reliable. So has Trident. But most experts agree that the improvements in Trident II are ones which Britain does not really need. In particular, Trident II is designed to be able to destroy a 'hard target' — for example, a heavily fortified enemy missile site — and for this purpose it is supposed to be incredibly accurate, with a margin of error of 400 feet at 4,000 nautical miles. This accuracy is considered important by Russian and American plan- ners for the maximum credibility of a superpower's strategic armoury. But for us it is an expensive and irrelevant extra. For if our Trident force is, indeed, to be a deterrent of 'last resort', then all we need (all!) is the ability to destroy, indiscrimi- nately so to speak, so much of the enemy's land and people (e.g. the main Russian cities) that he will not dare to risk this in order to subjugate us. It is thought that for this threat to be credible we need a 'second strike' capacity: the ability to launch this attack after we have ourselves been attack- ed (the 'first strike'), or, in plain words, the ability to kill most of them even after they have killed most of us.

(As soon as one expresses it like that, it seems not merely ridiculous but wrong even to put such a sentence on paper. Somehow one feels that such words should never actually be written, such thoughts remain unthought. It is no doubt to help us over this absurd human weakness that the experts supply us with anaesthetic phrases like 'minimum last resort second-strike deterrent', which is apparently what I have just described.) Now according to Dr Owen, cruise missiles would give us an adequate mini- mum last resort second-strike deterrent. Jonathan Alford of the International Insti- tute for Strategic Studies, one of the most respected authorities in the field, cautious- ly endorses this technical judgment, although emphasising the advances in cruise technology which could not con- fidently have been anticipated when the original Trident decision was taken in 1978-80. In Colonel Alford's estimation, if we had a force of 200 cruise missiles we could probably expect to do as much damage to any potential enemy as we can now expect to do with Polaris. (Defenders of Trident customarily use a figure of 300-400 cruise missiles, but this figure is what you need to pack the same punch as Trident, not what you need to have a credible minimum deterrent.) These 200 cruise missiles could be put on smaller nuclear submarines, as Dr Owen suggests, but some or all of them could also be put on our highly sophisticated Tornado nuc- lear bombers (a popular idea in the RAF!); on the ground, just like the American cruise missiles at Molesworth or Greenham Common (very cheap, very unpopular); or even on small patrol boats zipping around our coastal waters (Prince Andrew at the helm?). There is thus a considerable varie- ty of cruise possibilities and combinations, and none of them is half so expensive as the one, mammoth, monolithic and inflexi- ble Trident programme.

Advocates of Trident say that the Rus- sians will develop better defences against things that come from below, like cruise. Dr Owen says the Russians will develop better defences against things that come from above, like Trident. But Colonel Alford points out that if the Russians do indeed strengthen their anti-ballistic mis- sile defences, perhaps trying to match the American Strategic Defence Initiative, this may actually enhance the case for Trident H: if you are going to have a ballistic missile, then better have a big one, because only a large missile will be capable of penetrating such defences. But isn't that another argument for choosing cruise?

The one shining light (or will-o'-the- wisp) which keeps politicians marching through this inspissated jungle of technical speculation is, of course, the idea that Trident is too expensive and cruise might be cheaper. When first announced in 1980 the total cost of the Trident programme was put at around five billion pounds. BY 1982, with the change to Trident II, the figure was up to about eight billion. The latest estimate, given to the House of Commons by the Defence Secretary on 11 March, is £9.87 billion. (This figure is based on last June's dollar exchange rate — £1:$1.28 — and is assumed to be spread over the 18 years from 1982 to 2000.) According to Mr Younger, Trident will take just three per cent of our annual defence spending, and no more than six per cent of the equipment budget. But last year's report by the Commons Defence Committee, which did a superb job squeez- ing the relevant facts out of reticent offi- cials, suggested that 'on unfavourable but by no means unreasonable assumptions' the proportion of the equipment budget taken by Trident could rise to 12.5 per cent in the peak year. (And we will still be paying for the maintenance of the Polaris force at the same time.) Moreover, be- cause we are buying American, this ex- penditure is peculiarly vulnerable to changes in the sterling-dollar exchange rate. In his statement to the House, Mr Younger explained that of the £584 million increase over the previous year's estimate no less than £324 million resulted from the depreciation of sterling against the dollar. And all this at a time when the Govern- ment has decided there will be a seven pet cent fall in defence spending (in real terms) over the three-year period to 1988-89. On further 'unfavourable but by no means unrealistic' assumptions, the SDP con- cludes that Trident could be devouring as much as a third of the Ministry of De- fence's new equipment budget by about 1990. 'Like the cuckoo in the nest,' David Owen writes in his new book A United Kingdom, 'it promises to take more and more from other parts of the defence effort.'

Here is the prospect which makes the Army and the Air Force howl. For you must remember that already in 1981, when the estimated cost of the Trident program- me was just half what is it today, John Nog concluded in his Defence Review that this country simply will not be able to afford its existing defence commitments: a large surface fleet, a 55,000-strong standing army on the Rhine, adequate air defence of these islands, and our own nuclear deterrent. He proposed to cut the surface fleet. The Falklands war scotched that, idea. But no one seriously doubts that all other areas of defence are going to be pinched and squeezed to make room for Trident. Moreover, while officially our Nato's deterrent', privately many of tbelll are worried that our conventional contri- bution to Nato will suffer. When I asked him about the cost prob- lem, George Younger made three main points. First, he said that the Tornado programme has been just as expensive (i9.7 billion over 19 years; 16 per cent of the equipment budget in the peak year), yet we have managed that. Secondly, he suggested that the amount of conventional weapons he could buy for the price of Trident would not dramatically affect the military balance, since the Russians have such an overwhelming superiority in con- ventional arms. However, figures subse- quently supplied to me by the Ministry, at his suggestion, might lead one to a differ- ent conclusion. For example, according to these figures a Challenger tank costs £1.5 million. So on the face of it, for the price of Trident we could have six and a half thousand more Challenger tanks on the Rhine. Would that really make no major difference to the military balance between Nato and the Warsaw Pact? Wouldn't that raise the 'nuclear threshold'? His third answer, and the most convincing, was simply that in the nature of things no conventional weapons, however many and however good, can do for your defence what nuclear weapons can. True. Palpably true. But not an argument for Trident rather than cruise.

The third part of the case against Trident Is that it is too American. As we have seen, the fact that it is so big and so expensive is closely connected with the fact that it is so American. But this part of the case raises even more fundamental questions. For if We strip off the jargon and the fudge we find that our nuclear defence policy is based on two fundamental propositions: (1) We need our own nuclear missiles because we cannot trust the Americans. (2) We have American nuclear missiles because we can trust the Americans. Of course this presentation is unfair, Insofar as what we 'cannot trust' them to do in statement (1) is to risk national destruction on our behalf in all conceivable circumstances where Britain might be threatened, whereas what we 'can trust' them to do in statement (2) is to design, develop, build and maintain good missiles. Yet it is a remarkable fact that on present plans the missiles paid for at such cost to the rest of the defence budget will actually be targeted from US Strategic Air Com- mand in Omaha, Nebraska, and installed and maintained at the US navy base in Trigs Bay, Georgia. English Gaullists of the Alan Clark school wonder darkly in what sense such a deterrent remains Inde- Pendent' at all. In operational terms the contradiction may not be so stark as it seems. The Trident missiles will apparently cnlY need maintenance in Georgia once e' vely seven to eight years, and we still retain the ability to change the targets at will. Indeed, in operational terms Trident e more independent than a cruise missile force could currently be, since on Present form we would have to rely on the United States both for its ultra- sophisticated electronic guidance system, and for the satellite intelligence to feed into this system. Even if we had the missiles, we don't have the system or the satellites.

But why not make them in Britain? According to the Defence Secretary's statement to the House, 'Over half the procurement of the Trident programme will fall in this country.' To put that another way, nearly five billion pounds' worth will go to the United States. (We do, however, aim to make our own warheads — at Aldermaston.) Couldn't we do more of it ourselves, as the French do? And if not alone, then with the French or other Europeans? Sir Raymond Lygo has all along argued that British Aerospace is capable of developing the necessary tech- nologies. And David Owen has consistent- ly pressed for more Anglo-French nuclear co-operation. Mentioning Sir Raymond Lygo, one thinks at once of the Westland affair. But this is Westland to the power of a hundred: vastly more important, but also much more difficult.

Clearly we cannot afford to do the whole thing ourselves. Therefore the choice is between American collaboration and European collaboration. But in nuclear arms the only available European partner is France, and it is very far from clear that the French really want to collaborate with us (although the nuclear burden on their defence budget is even greater). So far, the French have been reluctant to talk to us for fear that we may share their secrets with the Americans, while we have been reluctant to talk to them for fear that the Americans may stop sharing their secrets with us. There is a nice story told about one of the few Anglo-French discussions on this topic. Both sides were so unforthcoming that, fearing the outbreak of total silence, the British placed on the agenda the crucial question of how to keep cornflakes dry on a nuclear submarine. 'What are corn- flakes?' asked the French.

France is, of course, the envy of neigh- bouring governments for its extraordinary domestic consensus on defence policy. David Owen is surely right to argue that one of the main reasons why nuclear weapons are so widely accepted in France is that 'they are seen to be French in every possible way'. How much of the British opposition to nuclear weapons would evaporate if they were seen to be British in every possible way: products of British scientific genius, built in factories giving jobs to British workers, maintained and targeted exclusively by Britain'? Quite a lot, one suspects.

In sum, the case against Trident is a very powerful one. It is hard to feel confident that all the other possibilities — of cruise rather than ballistic missiles, of more Brit- ish research, development or manufacture, and of more European co-operation were as fully explored as they should have been in the crucial decision-making period of 1978-80. And it is difficult to resist the conclusion that these other possibilities were not more fully explored because of a reluctance throughout the Establishment (Labour as well as Conservative) to ask the most difficult questions about the real purpose of our nuclear force, the real limits of British power and the real content of our `special relationship' with the United States. Instead, we just took the easy option, and muddled through to a solution which is itself a muddle. That much we may say, with benefit of hindsight, of the decision taken in 1978-80. But what can be done about it now? If Mrs Thatcher wins the next election and remains Prime Minister for a third term then there will be nothing more to be done about it. By the time she retires in 1992 or thereabouts the Trident program- me will be so far advanced that cancella- tion would be madness. But every other government which might come to office in 1987 or 1988 is certain to reconsider the Trident programme very critically, and quite likely to cancel it. Any other Con- servative prime minister would be sure to listen attentively to the growing chorus of dismay from the armed forces and his own backbenches, as the defence budget is squeezed until the pips squeak. Labour and the Alliance are already committed to cancelling it. Labour's official position is that they would 'decommission' Polaris too, leaving us to rely on the Americans (plus our own conventional forces in Nato), although Denis Healey, who knows better, has just suggested in an interview for Marxism Today that they might after all hang on to Polaris, pending further nego- tiations with Mr Gorbachev.

The Liberals and the Social Democrats can't agree exactly what they would do, but David Owen, who knows best, would cancel Trident, extend the life of Polaris for as long as possible, and start discussions with the French (and perhaps the West Germans and Italians as well) about jointly building a 'European' cruise missile. By 1987 or 1988, however, the Trident can- cellation costs would already be very high, although Dr Owen has suggested, in an interview for this article, that they might be somewhat reduced by converting for use as cruise missile launchers the two Trident submarines on which Vickers will already have started work. It is still difficult to imagine the French coming in with us in a big way, particularly since they have already decided to go ahead with mod- ernising their own submarine-launched ballistic missile force. (Their latest boat is called L'Inflexible). As a result, even if Dr Owen had it all his own way in British defence policy after 1988, we would most likely end up buying American cruise missiles and putting some in the two huge hulls designed for Trident and some in smaller submarines. This would also be a muddle, but perhaps a cheaper, more flexible and altogether better muddle.

The whole discussion is further compli- cated by the ambiguous place of the British and French deterrents in arms control negotiations, an issue which Mr Gorbachev has quite deliberately brought to the fore in his recent propaganda offensives. The way in which Mr Gorbachev has put this question — demanding not merely that we freeze our nuclear arsenals, but that we neither modernise them nor take any weapons from the United States — sug- gests that he is serious only about the propaganda impact of his proposals on West European public opinion. He invites the answer 'no'. He has got the answer `no', quite sharply, from Mrs Thatcher and from M. Mitterrand. Yet the British Gov- ernment's present stance on the place of our deterrent in a possible arms control agreement is not itself a miracle of clarity and realism. The Government's oft- repeated position is that only when the superpowers have agreed to major reduc- tions of their arsenals will ours become a significant proportion of the total, and then we will talk about it. We 'never say never', in Sir Geoffrey Howe's catchy phrase.

But why don't we say 'never'? If, as we maintain, our nuclear force is indeed a last resort second-strike deterrent, the mini- mum we need to make these islands into a sanctuary in the face of now barely imagin- able threats, then surely we should say `never'. That is, after all, precisely what the French say: `Jamais!' If, on the other hand, as we simultaneously maintain, our nuclear force is a 'contribution to Nato', currently targeted in Omaha, Nebraska, but with a 'second centre of decision' enhancing the overall deterrent effect, then one can well understand the Russians' concern, and our answer should logically be not 'never' but 'soon'. According to the British Government our Trident force will have 512 strategic warheads. On paper this already looks not insignificant in propor- tion to the Russians' own global total of perhaps 10,000 strategic warheads. It would look proportionately even more significant if the superpowers really did cut both their strategic arsenals by 50 per cent, as Mr Gorbachev has proposed. (In that unlikely event, incidentally, the Pentagon might well cancel their Trident D5 prog- ramme, and then where would we be? Back with Trident I?). But then again, if we honestly believe that 512 warheads distributed in four Trident submarines is the minimum necessary for our national defence, 'never' is just the word. Wrapped up in a muddle of its own making, the `Give me another 10p and I'll get you a knighthood.' Government's real position seems to be: never say anything except 'never say never'.

David Owen has made a characteristical- ly skilful play here. He suggests that if we had his favoured cruise missiles, with a combined punch equivalent to Polaris, then we could count these as European `theatre' nuclear forces. The Russians could then agree to us and the French keeping these, our 'theatre' nuclear forces, in return for their keeping SS-20s in Asia. We would thus arrive at a European 'zero option': no American intermediate-range missiles in Western Europe, no Soviet intermediate-range missiles in Eastern Europe. This is not half so sensible as it sounds, since, first, on any definition, the French force de dissuasion is 'strategic rather than 'theatre', and, secondly, if the British and French nuclear forces are indeed a minimum national second-strike deterrent, then they are not in any way a counterpart to those SS-20s which the Soviet Union might at any time bring back across the Urals to threaten, say, Wes; Germany. But it is an ingenious and constructive piece of fudge. An American official expert on arms control issues takes an altogether more sceptical view of Mr Gorbachev's propos- als. He suggests that the British and French deterrents are not technically, of them- selves, a major obstacle. If the superpow- ers really want to reach an agreement, they will reach an agreement — whatever we or the French do or say. Moscow and Washington finessed the issue perfectly well in the Salt I treaty. And anyway the Russians must realise that the French will always say 'never'. Politically, the problem of the British and French deterrents may be an important card for Gorbachev to play; substantively, it is a minor complica- tion. The suggestion from the Left that Bri- tain, by unilaterally renouncing nuclear weapons, would point the way forward for the superpowers, is, of course, quite naive. But there is a more serious argument about nuclear proliferation. If we keep an `rode" pendent' nuclear deterrent, then we do so on a basic assumption about the right and duty of a national government to use all available means to protect its subjects against foreign attack, invasion or bullying. But if we assume that our government has this right and duty, then what moral grounds have we for saying that other nations should not acquire these weapons too? (Or are there two classes of nations. those that deserve nuclear weapons, being, civilised, mature, peace-loving etc, and those that do not?) Here is a powerful argument for demonstratively renouncing nuclear weapons altogether. Unfortunate- ly, it is also a powerful argument for hanging on to them and making sure that they are very frightening indeed. For, whatever our opinion, most other govern- ments in the world — and particularly those of post-colonial countries, created in the flawed image of the 19th-century Euro- pean nation-state — certainly believe that they have as much right as we do to wield this ultimate totem of nation-statehood. Historical experience suggests that it is only a matter of time before they acquire the ability as well. (China, India, Pakistan, Israel and South Africa have probably done so already.) And common sense suggests that it is by such a country, not by the Soviet Union, that nuclear weapons are most likely to be used.

For us to give up nuclear weapons altogether would thus be a triumph of hope over experience. To keep them, however, is to increase the risk of destroying both hope and experience, leaving, perhaps, only Pride or Prejudice prowling some- where in the Atlantic depths, with two desperate naval officers wondering if there is any sense, duty or honour in turning the key that will take a million lives, to avenge a nation that has ceased to exist.