Strange that so many members of the cabinet who were passionate opponents of nuclear weapons when they were necessary to the country's security should support their retention with equal fervor now that they are irrelevant to Britain's defense.

Thirty years ago - when, I will gladly gamble, Margaret Beckett and John Reid supported the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament - the deterrent really deterred. Had there not been what was graphically called "the balance of terror", there would certainly have been war over Berlin, probably over Czechoslovakia and possibly over Hungary. The way the deterrent worked was always too subtle for CND to understand. Its members could not understand that the nuclear arsenal existed to prevent a war rather than to win one. Enthusiasts for the replacement of Trident make the same mistake. They seem to believe that we might actually need to use our nuclear capability against a new threat to which they often refer but never define.

The deterrent kept the world at peace because, during the cold war, the west faced a sophisticated enemy. The Kremlin, like the White House, had no desire to bring the world to an end. Signals were sent across the iron curtain, defining how far the protagonists were prepared to allow their opponent to go. Both sides stuck, more or less, to the demarcation line.

Playing the game required Nato to allow the Soviet Union to behave abominably within the boundaries of the Warsaw pact. That was the price that had to be paid to avoid nuclear annihilation. Even then it was easy to argue against what Harold Wilson called "the so-called independent, so-called British nuclear deterrent". America's firepower was enough to do the essential job. Soviet policy was unlikely to be changed by the knowledge that, after the US had blown several huge craters in and around Moscow, the United Kingdom would blow a small hole of its own. Going it alone was always inconceivable, and probably impossible. Providing bases for American forces was all that was required of a loyal ally.

Supposing that we are under threat from "rogue states" as well as "international terrorists", does anyone really imagine that either of those enemies will be deterred in the way that the Soviet Union once was? If Bin Laden or al-Qaida are the enemy, on whom are we to threaten to unleash the holocaust? If it is Iran and North Korea that concerns us, is it remotely possible that those countries will react to the balance of terror as the Soviet Union did in the 1950s and 1960s? Our complaint against them is that they do not behave as rational states behave. Why should they respond rationally to a nuclear threat?
The whole idea is clearly a fantasy. So why does the government propose to squander billions of pounds that could be used to fulfill the social purposes that ought to be Labour's overwhelming priority?

A clue is provided by reference to the decision for Britain to become an atomic power back in 1947. Initially, Clement Attlee had hoped for close nuclear cooperation with the US, but President Truman reneged on the Quebec accords, which had guaranteed the pooling of information on both the peaceful and military use of atomic energy. Nato was still only an idea. American isolationism remained a prospect. The Soviet Union's aggressive intentions were clear. Britain, the prime minister decided, had to be able to defend itself.

Looking back, he also revealed the other - and to him more compelling - reason for hanging the millstone round our necks. "For a power of our size and with our responsibilities to turn our back on the bomb did not make sense." In short, prestige and position required Britain to make its own nuclear device. It was necessary to make us a major "power". No doubt the present government feels the same. Admittedly, giving up the so-called deterrent is much more difficult than not acquiring it in the first place.

And there is Tony Blair's reputation as the hammer of Labour's left to be protected. But to posture about the importance of nuclear independence is to fight the battles of the past. A truly modernising government would accept the world as it is today. The error continues. New Labour is neither as new or as Labour as it ought to be.

Roy Hattersley is a Guardian columnist and former deputy leader of the Labour party.

JamesGalbraith's Comment on Roy Hattersley's article in the "Comment is Free" section of the Guardian website (http://www.guardian.co.uk) December 4, 2006 03:25 AM

With great respect to Roy Hattersley, the greatest danger in the Cold War was not that deterrence of the Soviet Union might fail.

The greater danger, including during the Berlin crisis of 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, was that powerful forces inside the U.S. government might run away with the nuclear trigger.

As of 1961, the U.S. nuclear war-fighting plan was predicated on an unprovoked first-strike by the United States, to occur before the USSR had developed an effective intercontinental missile force. Kennedy, Johnson and McNamara were acutely aware of this danger, and their strategic policies through the 1960s can be best understood as a determined, even desperate effort to contain it.
Heather Purcell and I documented the military plans for a first strike in The American Prospect in 1993; the article is entitled "Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?" and can be found at

http://www.prospect.org/print/V5/19/galbraith-j.html

The point is important today because the preemptive war doctrine of the current U.S. leadership, especially Vice President Cheney, is directly descended from the preemptive war doctrine of the Cold War Air Force generals Curtis LeMay and Thomas Power. I argued this point from Cheney's own speeches, in The Texas Observer in 2002. That article is at:

http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=1113

Why is this important now? Because while Hattersley makes a powerful argument against Trident on the ground of the current irrelevance of deterrence, that isn't the only issue. There is also the danger, indeed the evil, of maintaining the capacity for attempted nuclear blackmail-- or even preemptive first use.
In the U.S., such a capacity exists, and there are those who would make it even more credible than it is--that's what recent pressure to develop usable "mini-nukes"--the so-called bunker busters--was about.
I do not suspect British authorities of entertaining the use of Trident in this way. But you never know when you might end up with someone like Cheney.

James Galbraith