Donald Trump and nuclear weapons are a scary mix. As president, he greatly expanded the US nuclear arsenal, scrapped arms control treaties and repeatedly threatened to start a nuclear war. On leaving office, he stole nuclear secrets from the White House and leaked their contents. A judge recently questioned his mental health.
For close ally Britain, the scariest thought is that Trump, if re-elected in November, could fatally undermine the UK’s “independent” nuclear deterrent, or worse, pressure London into actually using it. If Trump blundered into a nuclear showdown with, say, China, Russia or North Korea, Britain would be expected to back him – and could become a target.
None of these scenarios may be ruled out, despite UK insistence that it retains sole operational control of its four Vanguard-class nuclear missile submarines. In truth, such outcomes grow more plausible as the international security situation deteriorates, Trump threatens to abandon Nato and Europe, and nuclear arms proliferate globally. Successive UK governments are primarily to blame for Britain’s deepening nuclear nightmare. All have colluded in the pretence that the UK deterrent, known generically as Trident, is independent. In fact, the Vanguard submarines rely on American technology, logistics and maintenance, as will their Dreadnought-class successors. The new W93 replacement warhead borrows from US designs.
Even the US-made Trident II D5 ballistic missiles that carry the warheads are not owned but leased under the terms of the 1958 US-UK mutual defence agreement (MDA) and 1963 Polaris sales agreement. “UK nuclear weapons are only as independent as the US wants them to be,” a new study by the anti-nuclear Pugwash scientists’ network says. “The MDA [locks] the UK into dependence on the US for the procurement of nuclear weapons,” Pugwash states. “In practice, the UK’s technical dependence on the US would constrain any attack to which Washington objected. For example, the UK is reliant on American software for all aspects of nuclear targeting.”
This chronic dependency would give a re-elected Trump huge leverage, should he choose to use it, in the not improbable event of a security or foreign policy clash with a Labour government, for example, over Ukraine. Britain’s deterrent has always ultimately relied on US goodwill, an all-party commission on Trident noted in 2014.
But Trump’s “goodwill” is a risky basis for a nuclear defence policy. He could, in theory, render the Trident fleet inoperable within weeks. “One way the US could show its displeasure would be to cut off the technical support needed for the UK to continue to send Trident to sea,” a 2006 white paper warned. Yet no one then seriously anticipated dealing with an irrational, antagonistic, isolationist president.
Britain’s nuclear deterrent is formally assigned to Nato. If Trump quits or sanctions the alliance, he may try to limit UK involvement. EU politicians who propose an alternative Anglo-French nuclear “umbrella” for Europe do not seem to realise Britain’s nukes are not its own to dispose of. London would have to ask Washington’s permission. More alarming yet is the prospect of Britain being drawn into a Trump-led nuclear war. Armageddon edged closer during his presidency. As well as scrapping arms control treaties, he expanded the list of external threats that might justify first use of nuclear weapons and doubled the number of US low-yield, so-called battlefield nukes, which are deemed more “usable”.
Britain’s habitual willingness to follow America to war, seen again recently in the Red Sea and notoriously in Iraq in 2003, could be its undoing – unless policy changes. “The UK is more likely to use nuclear weapons in a bilateral UK-US operation than either as part of a Nato strike or independently,” Pugwash says. The House of Commons defence select committee concluded in 2006 that “the only way that Britain is ever likely to use Trident is to give legitimacy to a US nuclear attack by participating in it…. In a crisis the very existence of the UK Trident system might make it difficult for a UK prime minister to refuse a request by the US president to participate.”
Trump aside, Britain’s deterrent faces multiple problems. One estimate puts the overall cost of renewing and maintaining Trident from 2019 to 2070 at £172bn. The system already faces delays and cost overruns. The first Dreadnought submarine is not expected to enter service until the early 2030s.
Meanwhile, the four Vanguard subs and their crews are undertaking record-length patrols, continuously at sea for five months or more. This reportedly compounds maintenance and morale problems. The entire fleet is now older than its originally planned service life of 25 years, according to the independent Nuclear Information Service. And the deterrent’s reliability is in question after a second, consecutive missile test failure last month. Official secrecy hinders public and parliamentary scrutiny of ministerial claims that all is working well.
In sum, the at-sea deterrent and the UK’s future as a nuclear weapons state are increasingly vulnerable to rising political, military, technical and financial pressures. If Trump insisted on renegotiating the MDA, which expires in December, or reneged outright, it is unclear what Britain could do.
How ironic if Trump, of all people, were to bring about Britain’s (involuntary) unilateral nuclear disarmament. How anti-nuclear campaigners would cheer! Perhaps this threat, and fear of being sucked into nuclear war, will revive debate over Trident – and why the UK continues to sidestep its non-proliferation treaty obligation to reduce and ultimately eliminate all nuclear weapons.
An incoming Labour government must not wait until disaster strikes. It should reallocate Trident’s billions to more socially useful projects. The belief that US-supervised and controlled nuclear weapons somehow make Britain safer and boost its global influence is delusional, unsustainable, unaffordable – and, in the age of Trump, downright dangerous.
• Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s foreign affairs commentator
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