The myth of multilateralism
The Labour Party’s clinging to the pretence of a commitment to multilateral nuclear disarmament is perhaps the most cynical of all the lies it still tells the electorate, on either side of the border. This weekend, as thousands of protesters congregate in Glasgow, Labour activists are mounting a frantic rearguard action pretending that independence and Trident are unconnected issues.
But the feeble smokescreen with which the party attempts to conceal the truth could be blown away by an asthmatic bee. It shouldn’t take too long to run through the logic.
Labour still, for the most part, mouths weasel words about being “against” nuclear weapons, but believing that a multilateral approach is the only way to rid Scotland and the UK of them. Yet in what scenario could that path ever arrive at that goal?
The UK’s nuclear “deterrent” numbers barely a couple of hundred warheads on a few dozen missiles. It’s a piffling 1% of the world’s total atomic arsenal, and therefore of almost no significance as a multilateral bargaining chip.
Even if it were to massively “punch above its weight” in negotiations – if one UK warhead were to somehow count for 10 of everyone else’s, say – we’d have to give up everything we had in exchange for reducing the rest of the planet’s stockpile by just 10%. Or put another way, leaving almost 90% of the world’s warheads intact.
Try to imagine that. Try to imagine a day when David Cameron or Ed Miliband or Nick Clegg (stop sniggering at the back, there) stood up in Parliament and said “Well, there are now only 90% as many nuclear warheads in the world as there were last year, multilateralism has worked, so we’re scrapping Trident”. Farcical, isn’t it?
Even if you take the theory to its most ridiculous extreme, it collapses under the slightest scrutiny. Picture some absurd, inconceivable Utopia where every current nuclear power agrees – intimidated by Britain’s mighty armoury – to scrap every single missile. Would we give up ours THEN?
Of course we wouldn’t. We saw the reality as recently as this month, where David Cameron flatly lied that we needed to keep Trident because of the (non-existent) threat posed by North Korea, and the uncertainty of the future. But the staggeringly obvious problem with that is that the future will, by definition, ALWAYS be uncertain. That’s why we call it “the future”. And therefore, that argument will never die.
Nuclear weapons can’t be uninvented. Some “rogue state” will ALWAYS have the possibility of being able to make a bomb, and we’ve seen time and again that as long as that remains the case, our politicians will insist that we must retain a “deterrent”.
Multilateralism will NEVER rid Scotland of nuclear weapons, or their crippling price tag, because there will never exist a world in which the current political arguments for their retention – however invalid those arguments are – are rendered redundant. The only difference between Labour and the Tories is that the Tories don’t even try to pretend otherwise.
The wider independence debate is one thing. But if you really want Trident out of Scotland, there is one – and only one – way that it can ever happen, whether in your lifetime or your children’s lifetime or your grandchildren’s lifetime: vote Yes in 2014.
I’ve never quite been able to get my head around British Labour’s inherently self-defeating argument that if we can’t get rid of all WMD everywhere then we must not get rid of any WMD anywhere.
Another aspect is that it’s actually quite hard to REDUCE the UK’s nuclear armament much more than has already been done. Let’s say, for example, that you wanted to reduce the current 160 missiles by 50%.
That’d leave you 80, spread across four submarines, only one of which is ever at sea at a time. So Britain’s entire operational arsenal would be just 20 warheads – clearly not enough to seriously deter any potential large adversary.
You could keep the same number of missiles and halve the number of subs instead, but then you couldn’t be sure of maintaining a boat on patrol all the time, rendering the “deterrent” absolutely useless – an aggressor would just wait until they were both in dock and hit us then.
Trident is already at the bare bones. It CANNOT be meaningfully reduced any further and still serve its intended function. It’s all or nothing, and as we’ve already seen, nothing is not an option for any of the UK’s political leaders.
Rev, I appreciate the point, one I can use in the near future but I have a couple of questions.
Why is the Labour Party pretending to be so anti nuke and then want to keep them. Especially given their historical support for CND?
1) What would Labour argue is the reason/logic in keeping them.
2) Does your article also make the point that since multi lateral disarmament will never happen then we need nukes to protect us from that one rogue state.
I personally feel I would prefer to save the money and use it to make sure everyone has a decent standard of living. To be spending billions on weapons while people live of food banks is not an acceptable choice for me.
Adam:
(1) No need to ask me – let them tell you themselves:
link to jimmurphymp.org
(2) Since multilateral disarmament will never happen, rogue states will never attack anyone – let alone Scotland – with nuclear weapons. The UK having them is a bit like you or me walking behind a tank division with a snooker ball in a sock.
I think Labour look upon Trident and nukes in general as THEIR bargaining chip when they sit at the “big table” in the same way as the Tories do. Thing is they are only at the “big table” because they are holding a very few nukes.No one else at the “big table” has so few nukes, amongst those holding nukes that is. In any case the “big table” aka Security Council has a lot MORE countries sitting at it who do NOT have nukes than those who do. I believe there are around a dozen non nuke countries as well as the “permanent five”
The problem is the UK is NOT a big player on the world stage and holding nukes does NOT make it one. The UK is hitting so far above its weight that it is bound to face a mighty fall at some point in time.The whole UK nuke thing is, in my view, lLITTLE boys playing with BIG toys that they have no control over.
Yes, Britian is indeed at the big table, sitting next to America in a secured high chair eating alphabeti spaghetti out of a bowl with a spoon clenched in her fist and getting most of it on the walls.
David Cameron used his speech in Govan to point out why a nuclear deterrent works; it protects us from being threatened by another nuclear power in the same way that it prevented North Korea (who could attack us at any minute) from threatening the USA…oh, wait.
I have always thought of it hypocritical of the nuclear powers criticising and using it as an excuse to go to war with other nations of WMDs yet, they build and keep the worst of all WMDs, nuclear weapons.
How can governments justify spending billions on weapon systems like Trident which gods forbid will never be used, when people even their own countries are suffering, from lack of care, housing, jobs, etc. Take the UK for example, David Cameron came to Scotland and BLATANTLY lied to the people of not only Scotland, but also the rest of the UK, as to the reason for spending in the region over the lifetime of the Trident replacement of approximately £100 billion Sterling, remember MoD price-tags have a habit of escalating, so could be a lot more than the estimated £100 billion, when that money could be used to help improve the NHS, new doctors, hospitals, nurses etc, help to build new schools, train new teachers and improve the education system, build social housing, and care for the poor and needy of our society. what is more important to a nation, spending billions on something that is an abomination, and would never be used by any sane or even a mad person, or caring and improving the lives of its people and future generations, and at the same time helping to make the world a far safer place.
Hail alba gu brath, Vote YES 18/09/14 for a chance to build a better, caring brighter future for Scotland
I remember going to an anti-trident meeting when the system was proposed as a replacement of polaris. The rally in Glasgow was chaired by a firebrand councilor called Ian Davidson who argued passionately against this new obscenity. Ah to be young again!
pmcrek says:
13 April, 2013 at 12:49 pm
Yes, Britian is indeed at the big table, sitting next to America in a secured high chair eating alphabeti spaghetti out of a bowl with a spoon clenched in her fist and getting most of it on the walls.
I almost spluttered my Lucozade over the PC when
I read that! What a superb analogy!
Of course the retention of Trident has nothing to do with multilateralism.It is instead more to do with an outdated concept of the U.K.’s place in the world than with any actual potential military use. There is a residual belief that the UK is a great world power, and that nuclear weapons cement that fact in reality. It’s a very expensive attempt to maintain a fiction.
Reminds me of an another thread on WOS (cant find at the moment), which parallels Labour’s thinking on WMD, the gist of it was if we cant fix it at the UK level we wont bother fixing it in Scotland.
“Reminds me of an another thread on WOS (cant find at the moment), which parallels Labour’s thinking on WMD, the gist of it was if we cant fix it at the UK level we wont bother fixing it in Scotland.”
This one, maybe?
link to wingsoverscotland.com
Yes , to be spending billions on weapons while at the same time subjecting many of your own population to poverty and food banks, is not only immoral but really is a war against your own people, and we know why they want to keep these useless weapons, it’s called money and greed and keeping the population down and in control. Even when we have Independence, it will still take some time to rid Scotland of these unethical disgusting waste of money killing machines. How dare they put them here in the first place.
Rev, Yeah spookily similar from Labour. Status Quo then. Wow nearly a year ago
I’m more frightened of Israel kicking off a nuclear strike more than anyone else. And that is one nation who hasn’t came clean about their nuclear stockpile. When South Africa was developing their nuclear warheads in the 1970s they got funding from Israel in return for expertise and uranium (from the very apartheid state-run mines that Thatcher was championing along with Cameron, in the Conservative Research Department at the time, in a trade visit circa 1989).
As for Labour, it was the Attlee government that developed Britain’s first nuclear weapon; it was Wilson’s government that oversaw Polaris and it was Tony Blair who sanctioned plans for a new Trident system in 2006. So Labour are up to their necks with a pro-nuclear agenda and anything they say against nuclear weapons is doubleshite. If Labour gained power tomorrow they would change NOTHING!
link to news.bbc.co.uk
Labour historically struggle when managing the military, when in power they tend to over compensate for the military mindset that Labour are less Hawkish than the Tories…..
“An isolationist society with a state-controlled media, in thrall to a outdated and failed economic model, sycophantically worshipping the political ideology of a dead leader and using nukes to grandstand on the world stage while systematically starving its own population” – at least that’s what they’re saying about us in Pyongyang.
Personally as an ex-colonial power that historically has caused many problems in the world, that continually likes to stick its nose in other countries business it’ll never want to give up its big stick.
With all these contortions, just to avoid voting for Independence, Labour might soon disappear up its own ass.
We’d all like to see the end of organised crime and Mafia clans but because we can’t do it everywhere doesn’t stop us doing it where we can.
Maybe that reduces it to a level Labour can understand.
G P Walrus
I heard Hague on Radio 4, during the G8 conference in London that N Korea was not a democracy, is a dictatorship, has repressed its people, maintains them in absolute poverty and needs to keep them in a state of constant fear by manufacturing external threats (I paraphrase)
There was me thinking that the Tories didn’t do irony.
smiley face thingy
We’d all like to see the end of organised crime and Mafia clans…Maybe that reduces it to a level Labour can understand.
That’s a level they can understand, but they’d still struggle with the sentiment.
Maybe in the not-too-distant future we’ll need Trident so that we can test-fire missiles in the North Sea to scare Europe and the US into sending us food aid.
It’s all about posturing on the World’s stage and keeping their place at the UN top table.
As Jack Straw said in 2006 re Scottish independence:
“Historically, England called the shots to achieve a union because the union was seen as a way, among others things, of amplifying England’s power worldwide.
And the reverse would certainly be true. A broken-up United Kingdom would not be in the interests of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, but especially not England.
Our [England’s] voting power in the European Union would diminish. We’d slip down in the world league GDP tables. Our case for staying in the G8 would diminish and there could easily be an assault on our permanent seat in the UN Security Council.”
link to news.bbc.co.uk
I think that the last time Labour had a cohesive policy on Neuks, Michael Foot (remember him?) Was marching at the front of a CND demo in his donkey jacket.
How times change.
@ GP Walrus,
You have no idea how close to the truth you are – but its been going on over 30 years!
In the last 30 years, army tanks have fired more than 6,700 shells into the Solway Firth from the range, containing nearly 30 tonnes of DU. The shells pierce canvas targets set up on the cliff tops, and then plunge into the sea.
At an MoD meeting in June 2004, a defence official was minuted suggesting that there could be “a future problem” firing DU into the sea. The OSPAR convention agreed by 15 governments, including the UK, to protect the northeast Atlantic said “it was illegal to dump waste into the sea”, he warned.
This was published in the Sunday Herald only 4 weeks ago!
link to robedwards.com
Anyone have any idea how the anti-Trident rally went this morning? How many people attended etc?
@ muttley79
Would have been good to get there, but I was unable to attend. More info should be available latter. You can follow the twitter comments here, some pictures also if you click the links:
link to twitter.com
muttley
Sky news reported earlier 4000 police said 2000 so I suppose it will be somewhere between these two
@muttley79
It was excellent. I’d say around 2- 3 thousand.
BBC telling porkies, surely not !
“Our [England’s] voting power in the European Union would diminish. We’d slip down in the world league GDP tables. Our case for staying in the G8 would diminish and there could easily be an assault on our permanent seat in the UN Security Council”
Oh dear. What a pity. Never mind.
@ Walrus (2:59)
That will be following a ‘No’ vote I assume! 🙂
Bawheid
Re the video want a bet the news will report Ms Renton was attacked at the rally
Ms Renton “Why are you attacking me?” Poor dear
@ Baheid,
It helps Unionists cause to understate the the attendance figures. They can then claim lack of interest on the part of Scotland’s people re this abomination that is Trident.
I have to work every Saturday, else I’d have been there.
Weapons of Mass Murder. We should have them because other nuclear powers who aren’t as morally responsible as the UK government might invade someone on a false pretext and threaten regional stability……… (sigh)
Yes, I saw Catriona Renton’s (the Scottish Labour BBC Scotland darling*) report saying there were hundreds there. Turns out there were thousands. Good old Pravada. What happened to Renton?
*One of many of course…
Lot of really interesting coamments here. Glad to hear the Demo was well attended. I couldn’t go because of health issues.
Re Robin Ross – yes, oh to be young again. Time was I would have been at every anti nuclear rally going.
@ Boorach: Yes I was painting a post No, UK = NK, picture there.
@ Adrian B: Eek! Satire is becoming impossible.
What does the light grey colour represent?
BTW, I see that there were no comments from Labour regarding the rally today.
link to bbc.co.uk
They are not usually so quiet.
@Seasick Dave
I`ve noticed that some of our commentors are unusually quiet as well. I guess that Hermoiney (whatever) will be checking on her Vitol shares. No sign of the other usual suspects though. Isn’t it nice.
Just remembered Hermoiney got the boot! 🙂
““An isolationist society with a state-controlled media, in thrall to a outdated and failed economic model, sycophantically worshipping the political ideology of a dead leader and using nukes to grandstand on the world stage while systematically starving its own population” – at least that’s what they’re saying about us in Pyongyang.”
my blood ran cold when I read this, and realised ,we have indeed turned into North Korea
@Jimbo (2.59 pm)
Wow, what a link that is! Cheers for that.
Labour leaving a trail of shite all over the internet…just follow the smell!
Trident should have never been bought in the first place. The concept was all ready out of date then.
Back in the days of the cold war if we had fired all the UK’s war heads at Moscow it would not have made any difference at all to Russias fighting ability. You only have to look at the losses they incured in WW2. China is the same. Lots of people.
Nothing more than a vanity purchase that Scotland can do well with out.
Muttley, is Pravada a British version of Pravda?
@Craig P
Pravada=BBC Scotland.
In CND in the 1980s, we used to say that multilateral disarmament meant never getting rid of any weapons. Obviously still the case!
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