Nuclear deterrent or nuclear bluff? | thearticle

Sometimes, semantics is important. A Strategic Defence Review (SDR) has been commissioned by the Labour Government and the title, in itself, tells us something. This is not a Strategic

Defence & Security Review that would examine all of the instruments of national power and therefore justify the descriptor _ Strategic _ . Rather, it is a limited examination of the

hardware, people, doctrines and procedures that _ in extremis _ would allow us to prosecute war. While the focus is narrow, the methodology is broad. Instead of conducting the review inside

the closed doors of the Ministry of Defence (MoD), the Government has invited Lord Robertson (former Secretary General of NATO and Labour peer), Fiona Hill (former US National Security

Council official) and Sir Richard Barrons (former eminent soldier) to create a highly capable triumvirate to oversee the process. In turn, public submissions were invited and panels

recruited from across civic society to examine individual subject areas. Overall, the process has a refreshing and eclectic look to it. Rather than being the product of the institutional

prejudices of the MoD Blob and poisonous inter-Service rivalries, this SDR looks novel and objective; expectations are high, and that’s where the problems start. Let’s return to semantics.

The purpose of the SDR is to examine “… _ the challenges, threats and opportunities of the twenty-first century, deliverable and affordable within the resources available to Defence within

the trajectory to 2.5%”. _ So let’s get this straight: the government has created an ambitious process, populated by competent people to think unconfined thoughts – and then slapped a price

cap on it. Leaving aside the inherent contradiction of meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century within 2.5ish % of a static GDP, this is just really bad politics.  Creating an

expectation (no taxes on working people) and delivering policies (taxes on working people) wins few prizes in public estimation and the SDR may soon join winter fuel payments, stop the boats

and grooming inquiries as examples of politicians not understanding politics. Never mind, we can probably get Louise Casey in to sort things out. Enough of that, let’s get back to the

prosecution of war. The SDR terms of reference contain a series of _ Parameters, _ the first of which is an unconditional commitment to maintaining a nuclear weapons capability, followed by

the identification of NATO as the cornerstone of national defence. Out go Boris Johnson’s Global Britain fantasies as defence is given a highly specific Euro-Atlantic geographic focus.

Expeditionary operations in hot and dusty places are not ruled out but will only be conducted by force structures configured to support NATO. No doubt this will reassure our NATO allies as

they contemplate a Trump Administration in the United States. Conventional wisdom has it that a capricious President wants to abandon NATO to the freeloading Europeans and concentrate on the

more serious business of containing, and potentially fighting, an irridentist China. This may be true, but it completely undervalues the compelling strategic logic of addressing America’s

main global peer adversary and I suspect the considered opinion of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff would be to back Donald Trump all the way. Certainly the procurement and doctrinal trends

within the US Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force (the main actors in any oceanic/insular campaign in the Western Pacific) point firmly in that direction. So, within a single presidential term,

the strategic landscape of Europe might change unrecognisably. America is unlikely to vacate the field completely and will probably settle for some form of semi-detachment – much lighter on

tactical manoeuvre force elements but still invested in capabilities like heavy lift, theatre air defence and, above all, the nuclear weapons that define genuine strategic power.

Unfortunately, semi-detachment brings its own problems. In sub-contracting the tactical battle to European NATO, America might find itself on the strategic hook of nuclear release without

any control over the process of escalation that got it there. The modern concept of escalation probably emerged from the particular intensity of Napoleonic warfare; certainly Clausewitz’s _

On War _ speaks of the tendency towards the exchange of insensate violence. When Herman Kahn in 1960, and in an act of conscious homage, wrote _ On Thermonuclear War _ he started the process

that, by 1965, had defined a 44-step process of escalation that started with _ Ostensible Crisis _ and ended with _ Spasm/Insensate War _ ; few have improved on that work since. If America

is unable to control the lower register of that escalatory process, why should it bear the consequences at the top end? Let’s pause at that point and see how things look from the other side.

At first glance, Russia’s war in Ukraine looks like a strategic mistake of historic proportions. Limited territorial gains, crippling casualties, a distorted and sanctioned economy plus the

provocation of Sweden and Finland that has led them into NATO, seem to have demonstrably weakened Russia’s strategic position. Look in greater detail, though, and the position is more

nuanced.  The profligate expenditure of human and material tactical resources will require an extended period of reconstitution but Russia’s strategic resources such as long range air

forces, the submarine flotilla and its nuclear inventory are intact. Moreover, battlefield experience will be distilled and disseminated in a way that will make the reconstituted force fit

for twenty-first century war. And, beyond that, Russia has further refined its already sophisticated doctrines on the continuum of violence all the way from sub-threshold influence

operations to nuclear release, evidenced by the revision of nuclear doctrine announced by Vladimir Putin in November. Finally, the Russian president sits on top of an escalatory process over

which, as a unilateral actor, he can exercise autonomous control. Which neatly returns us to the opening parameters of the British SDR. Any scintilla of doubt over an American President’s

willingness to press the nuclear launch button will have profound implications for deterrence in Europe. It might encourage Russian adventurism or incipient European pacifism; either way, it

will vastly increase the significance of the British and French nuclear capabilities. Including them in the same sentence does not mean they are the same thing. British nuclear weapons are

committed to NATO; French nuclear weapons are not. Britain has a single, submarine launched, nuclear delivery system; France has submarine launched and air delivered weapons. Of course it’s

not only nuclear weapons that have the capacity to deter or escalate. Russia has been assiduous in creating military capability that bridges the gap between the tactical battlefield and a

strategic nuclear exchange. Use of weapons like the hypersonic _ Oreshnik _ ballistic missile against London would fundamentally raise the stakes, particularly as Britain has negligible

anti-missile defences. At a national level, we have no obvious mechanism to deter this sort of attack as even a limited nuclear response would be disproportionate and, in breaching the

nuclear threshold, irrevocable. Taking this rather esoteric argument even further, what would the NATO response be to the detonation of a single limited yield Russian nuclear device in an

area of remote NATO member sovereign territory like, say, the Svalbard archipelago in Arctic Norway? Nuclear capable French aircraft would not have the range to engage an equivalent target

and, even if they did, would have to survive comprehensive Russian air defences. Responding with a similar weight of attack from a British or French submarine would likely be a one-shot

gesture as the missile launch would be immediately detected and assumed to be nuclear armed. In turn, this would invite the engagement of the submarine and the potential loss of a major

component of continuing deterrence.  Nobody has ever claimed that alliance-led warfare on a continental scale in the nuclear age would be easy, but it looks as though it might be about to

become even more complicated. Let’s draw the threads together. The SDR currently underway has as its defining principles a commitment to a national nuclear capability and to the NATO

alliance. The strategic geometry within NATO could well change with the arrival of the Trump Administration; it is possible, though unlikely, that America could quit NATO completely. A more

likely course of US action would be a semi-detached arrangement that would come with its own complications, including an inherent ambivalence towards nuclear release. Russia is down but not

out and retains a formidable strategic inventory informed by a sophisticated and flexible escalatory doctrine that includes the presumption of nuclear warfighting. Without the absolute

guarantee of US strategic commitment, a European NATO would be completely outgunned at the higher levels of sub-nuclear engagement and susceptible to manipulation once a nuclear threshold

was crossed by a Russia doctrinally and materially equipped to dominate the process of escalation. In short, a British Prime Minister could be confronted by the choice of surrendering or

blowing up the world. In the meantime, an SDR is taking place that flatters to deceive and has little chance of addressing the question of whether we are spending around 12% of the national

defence budget on a nuclear capability that is more bluff than deterrent. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an

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