Nuclear hedge fund
From Dr Jeremy Stocker
Sir: Andrew Gilligan (‘A terrifying plan for nuclear strikes’, 29 October) is being unduly alarmist about the future of Britain’s small nuclear deterrent. The development of socalled ‘usable’ nukes does not imply a wish or intention actually to use them, but rather is an essential element of effective deterrence.
If you rely simply on the sheer awfulness of nuclear weapons for their deterrent effect (‘existential’ deterrence in the jargon), the person you’re most likely to deter will be yourself. You won’t then deter anybody else, which defeats the whole purpose of a deterrent in the first place.
However remote and awful the prospect, you have to come up with weapons, and strategies for their use, to persuade others that, in extremis, you would push the button. There, in the paradoxical logic of deterrence, lies the best hope that you won’t have to.
Gilligan is right to observe that in some future scenarios Trident is something of a ‘blunderbuss’. But as a response to a resurgent Russia, hostile China or newly nuclearised Iran it will do. However distant the prospect of conflict with any of these states, we cannot predict what the world will look like in 30 or 40 years’ time. Consider how much has changed in the last 20 years.
Retention of a ‘minimal’ nuclear deterrent (or rather the cheapest deterrent, a lifeextended Trident) is simply a prudent hedge against a highly uncertain and unknowable future.
Jeremy Stocker
Centre for Defence & International Security Studies, Henley-on-Thames, Oxon
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