Weapons that are keeping the peace?

The Scottish Catholic bishops have again raised the possession of nuclear weapons as a grave moral issue, which it undoubtedly is. It is also a complex one. The point of possessing nuclear weapons is to enable a nation to threaten to do unimaginable harm to large numbers of citizens of another country. Its only possible justification would be if that country poses a similar threat in return, in which case the resulting nuclear balance deters aggression by either side. The bishops’ position in Scotland, consistently over the last few decades, has been that to possess the means and conditional intention to do something grossly immoral – which killing millions of innocent people certainly would be – is itself immoral. In their guidance to Scottish Catholic voters, they declare: “Nuclear weapons represent a grave threat to the human family.”

But that does not point to a simple solution. The Catholic Church’s overall position, as expressed for instance by Pope Benedict XVI, is likewise that “In a nuclear war there would be no victors, only victims”, but he goes on to urge those countries in possession of nuclear weapons to strive for “a progressive and concerted nuclear disarmament”. This is rather more nuanced than the Scottish bishops’ position, and recognises that a country like the United States would be unlikely ever to lower its nuclear guard unless all its conceivable opponents, present and future, did so too. Meanwhile talks on nuclear disarmament by mutual agreement between the five major nuclear-armed nations have stalled, and Pope Francis has appealed for them to be resumed in earnest.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) opposes the continued use of the naval base at Faslane on the River Clyde as the home of the Trident submarine fleet, but that has long been part of the party’s campaign of independence from the rest of the United Kingdom. Its objection could be met by moving the Trident base to, say, Plymouth, 600 miles to the south. The SNP does not advocate an independent Scotland withdrawing from Nato, and nuclear deterrence is part of Nato’s defence strategy. The Scottish Catholic bishops’ statement would have sounded more politically even-handed had it pointed that out.

The existing Trident submarine fleet is likely to need replacing in the next decade. The Tories are committed to four submarines as at present; the Liberal Democrats would prefer three, and Labour says it will abide by what the experts say but wishes Britain to continue as a nuclear power. They all concede that the end of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union has changed the strategic argument, without reaching the conclusion – which many military experts advocate – that there might be better uses for the enormous sums of money involved. Trident is a major drain on the British defence budget.

However, there is a new factor in play. For whatever reason the Russian President has started to rattle his nuclear sabre at the West, while Russia has become an unpredictable – and somewhat inscrutable – threat to the stability of the states bordering it. Generating uncertainty in one’s opponents as to one’s nuclear intentions has always played a part in nuclear strategy and the Russians know this very well. The question “Precisely what is Vladimir Putin up to?” has become a major headache for Western foreign and defence policymakers, which is just what the Kremlin wants.

Is this the right moment for the United Kingdom to fold its hand at the nuclear card table? Would the world be a safer and more stable place if there were one less nuclear power? Or is Trident part of the nuclear umbrella that protects, say, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which are ex-Soviet bloc but now in Nato and the European Union and feeling highly vulnerable? It is unwise, and not particularly moral, to pretend such questions do not exist.