NATO, Trident and Scottish Independence

SNP CND briefing

SNP CND snpcnd.org enquiries@snpcnd.org

If Scotland wants to stay in NATO then it will be more difficult to get rid of Trident. Three European countries want US nuclear weapons removed from their soil, but this hasnt happened because of obstruction from within NATO. The alliance would delay, possibly for ever, if Scotland asked to stay in NATO on the condition that Trident must go. If Trident is removed from Scotland then there will be no nuclear weapons in Britain. The opinion poll figures dont mean that more people will vote YES in the referendum if the SNP support NATO membership. Changing party policy on NATO is inconsistent with the vision of Scotland as a young, vibrant and peaceful nation.

NATO and nuclear weapons Current SNP policy is that an independent Scotland should not be a full member of NATO, because NATO is a nuclear alliance. In May 2012, at the Chicago conference, NATO reaffirmed that it will remain a nuclear alliance so long as there are any nuclear weapons in the world. So there is no reason for the SNP to change tack. The party is in tune with the majority of people in Scotland, particularly women, when it takes a clear stand against nuclear weapons. The proposal to change SNP policy may be well-intentioned, but it fails to take account of the reality of NATO politics. If the government of an independent Scotland went to NATO with the proposal that they wanted to remain in the alliance without Trident, they would not, as former NATO General Secretary George Robertson has suggested, be told No. But neither would they be told Yes. The question would be lost in the byzantine decision-making process of the alliance. Several members of NATO, including the RUK and the US, would be keen to postpone any answer. Their goal would be to retain Scotland within the alliance, with Trident still at Faslane. They would explain Scotlands long wait for an answer as the inevitable result of the need to retain cohesion within the alliance. As the years passed by, the new institutions of an independent Scotland would be woven into the fabric of NATO, making any attempt at departure more painful. The experiences of Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands provide a clear warning to Scotland. These are three of the five countries who are hosts to a total of 180 US nuclear weapons. The other two nations are Italy and Turkey. Many of the B61 nuclear bombs in these countries are assigned for use by Air Forces from the host countries. Country Number of nuclear weapons For use by For use by Total host Air Force US Air Force 10-20 10-20 10-20 50 60-70 10-20 10-20 10-20 10-20 10-20 50 60-70 50-100 100 160-200

Germany Italy Belgium Netherlands Turkey Total

Successive parliaments in Belgium have, since 2005, called on their government to put forward proposals for the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons. In April 2010 the Dutch parliament adopted a resolution urging their Foreign Minister to tell the US Government that the weapons in Holland should be withdrawn. Most political parties in Germany, including the Free Democratic Party (FDP), are opposed to the presence of these weapons. Since 2009, the FDP have been part of the coalition government and have filled the post of Foreign Minister. The FDP insisted that the coalition agreement includes a clause calling for the removal of US nuclear weapons from Germany. The question of what to do with these bombs had been a topic of discussion within NATO for many years. In 2010, a concerted move was made by Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands to urge NATO to rethink its nuclear policy. However, this initiative has run into the sand. The alliance set up a Deterrence and Defence Review. The final drafting of the report from this review was dominated by a Quad of four countries, three of which were the states with their own nuclear weapons (Britain, France and the US). The report, agreed at the Chicago summit in May 2012, not only failed to recommend any significant change in nuclear policy, but it endorsed Americas plan to spend $11 billion modernising the B61 bombs. This B61-12 programme will turn these freefall nuclear bombs into precision guided weapons. Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands could insist that the US must remove nuclear weapons from their soil. However, in each case, the democratic will of the population has not been carried out, because it was in conflict with the desire to maintain cohesion and consensus within NATO. Norway is in a different position. It does not permit US nuclear weapons to be based on its territory. But Norway has had a similar experience when it comes to trying to change NATO from within. The country plays a constructive role in promoting nuclear disarmament at global meetings such as the Non Proliferation Treaty conference. But Norway has been cautious and unsuccessful in its attempts to modify NATOs nuclear policy. NATO is a roadblock on the way to a nuclear-weapons free world. It delays nuclear arms reductions rather than promoting them. NATOs role in the world NATO was set up as a defensive alliance during the Cold War. In recent years it has taken on a wider, expeditionary role. Its largest operation has been in Afghanistan. The members of NATO do not all play an equal role in the alliance. The United States has a dominant role, as it spends far more on its armed forces then any other nation in the world. An independent Scotland should be free to decide when and how its forces might be employed overseas. If Scotland is a member of NATO then we would be under pressure to send our young men and women to fight in the next Afghanistan war, wherever that might be. Trident and Scottish independence Trident has been a significant issue in the referendum debate, and it is likely to remain one. Moving nuclear weapons out of Scotland to an alternative base in England or Wales would be very difficult, if not almost impossible. The MOD would need to replace the Faslane submarine base and the Coulport nuclear weapons store. Finding a replacement for Coulport would be particularly difficult. There is no existing MOD site which fits the bill. Building a massive new nuclear weapons depot on a Greenfield site would be very contentious and expensive. Scottish CND has produced a report, Trident: Nowhere to Go, which looks at all the options. It concludes that there is no viable alternative site for the UK Trident force in England, Wales, the US or France. Even if new locations could be found, it would take many years before they were operational. It took 14 years to expand Faslane and Coulport so they could accommodate Trident. Building from scratch would take even longer. There is a real danger that a London government will say, Yes we will move Trident, but let us keep it at Faslane and Coulport for 20 years until we build new bases. Several years later, London is likely to say Sorry but we cant find anywhere else, well need to keep Trident in Scotland indefinitely.

Because there is nowhere for Trident to go, if the government of an independent Scotland insists that Trident is removed, then the UK will have no nuclear weapons. There are two implications of this. One is that the pronuclear lobby will be very interested in what happens. The second is that Scotland has an opportunity to make a significant impact on nuclear disarmament. We dont need to be kept waiting. A second Scottish CND report, Disarming Trident, demonstrates how the government of an independent Scotland could insist that all nuclear weapons were deactivated within days and then removed from Scotland within two years. The Scottish government responded to this report saying, We are firmly committed to the earliest possible withdrawal of Trident from Scotland .... The suggested timetable is a welcome indication of how quickly Trident could be removed once Scotland has the powers to decide its own defence and security policy. In 2009 Jim Sillars argued that the SNP should ditch its opposition to both NATO and Trident. More recently he has said that NATO countries would interfere in the referendum, if the party did not support the alliance. However, any such intervention, particularly from the US, would almost certainly be counterproductive. Scotland should not sneak timidly onto the world stage, afraid of our own shadow. We should have the confidence to be brave and to project ourselves as a modern nation, with visions which are routed in our concern for humanity. There is no better way to do this than to state firmly that there will be no place for Trident. Adopting membership of NATO means that we will be compromising on these principles from the start. It also means that the vision of a nuclear-free Scotland will be mired in the internal politics of the alliance. SNP members should ask themselves whether an independent Scotland would be more or less likely to get rid of nuclear weapons if it is in NATO. A move away from the current position will be interpreted as a weakening in the partys resolve to get rid of nuclear weapons. Advocating membership of a nuclear alliance will be seen, by the pro-nuclear lobby, as a step towards acceptance of Trident. Polls on NATO: an insufficient basis for a U-turn There has been one primary case made for why the SNP should change its policy on NATO that it is popular with voters and could therefore sway an independence referendum. Those proposing a policy change do not suggest that Scotland would face any realistic global security threat if Scotland was not in NATO and so the case is based not on national security but referendum tactics. So the claim that NATO is popular must be interrogated. In a poll organised by the SNP's proponents of NATO, 75 per cent or respondents said they would favour NATO membership. Then again, in a poll of larger sample size and therefore smaller margin for error, 65 per cent of US citizens think that Barak Obama would be better suited to protect them from an alien invasion than would Mitt Romney. So for a voter who thinks that America is going to be invaded by aliens in the next four years, Obama is a shoe-in for a second term. And those Scots who think they are about to face a military invasion will be more likely to vote Yes in a referendum if the SNP changes its position on NATO. But since few US voters really expect to be invaded by aliens, the poll becomes theoretical. Likewise a NATO position for people who do not feel under imminent threat. This is a standard problem with these kinds of polls the abstraction is so great and so much information is missing that the headline numbers do not allow accurate interpretation. So if, for example, the 25 per cent who oppose NATO feel strongly about it and the 75 per cent who support it don't really care unless someone stops them in the street and asks them in an opinion poll, shifting position is more likely to harm a Yes vote than benefit it. Likewise, if it turns out that, for example, women disproportionately dislike war, weapons and nuclear alliances and are also disproportionately likely to vote No in a referendum then changing position would harm the vote. And this is the actual position and the same goes for young people who are motivated to vote. The thing about opinion polls is that unless you can assess the 'segmentation' of support and cross-reference it against other positions it is not possible to make any realistic assessment of the generalised outcome.

It also takes no account of conflicting polling answers. For example, you can ask three successive questions Do you like NIMBYism?, do you want to live next to a nuclear reactor?, do you want to live next to a waste incinerator - and get a no, no, no answer. This means that in most circumstances the first answer must simultaneously be interpreted as 'correct' but ' functionally invalid'. Likewise with NATO: do you want to be in NATO?, do you support the Afghan war?, do you support the use of depleted uranium weapons?, do you support a defence strategy based on first-strike use of weapons of mass destruction strategy?, do you support extrajudicial executions by unmanned drones? and so on. In almost every case, only the first question gets a positive answer. People like NATO if it is put to them as a theoretical construct but dislike it on the basis of everything it does. This extrapolates as follows. If the debate over NATO is allowed to be predicated on the opening statement that NATO is the most effective military force in history then this allows a level of abstraction that resolves the conflict between 'I like NATO'/'I don't like what NATO does' to the former. If the debate is based on the functional meaning of NATO membership for a future Scotland it tends to resolve in the opposite direction. Which is to say that even on bald polling data, a pro-NATO position only benefits you if you accept the core argument for NATO to begin with and don't seek to make the counter argument. Since the SNP leadership has indicated an intention to reverse position on NATO, has it faced a decreased level of attack from pro-NATO opponents? The clear answer is no. This is because the Gordian Knot solution identify where you're weak and change position is a myth. Weakness is not measured by how many horrible things your opponents say about your position but by how well people believe your basket of positions work together as a coherent whole. Shifting positions in the opposite direction to the cumulative direction of your other policies may appear to close off a problem but all it does is create a ripple of other conflicts and contradictions which open up more fertile ground for attack by your opponents. Which is precisely what has happened. The SNP has sold an independent Scotland as a young, vibrant and peaceful proposition. It is proposing a change that confuses that proposition. This is likely to put off those who support a peaceful prospectus (such as women and the young) but is unlikely to do much for people who like guns and bombs (they are much more likely to identify with Westminster in the first place). And it only works for people who put the issue high on their list of priorities, which is most likely to be those who oppose NATO and nuclear weapons. It confuses the strategy and makes the SNP look cynical and lacking in moral courage. It alienates almost all active supporters of independence outside the SNP and will cause more conflict within the Yes campaign. It removes all differentiation between the SNP and the other parties. It does nothing to counter the media onslaught from those that oppose independence. In fact, tactically and strategically, it is hard to see what meaningful benefit it is meant to bring. But there is one final and overriding point with which no political strategist would disagree: no major policy should ever be changed on the basis of one opinion poll without very significant additional information. So, unless those proposing a change in NATO position have additional coherent arguments, a change of policy should be opposed on that basis alone.