The fears for Europe’s future if Britain banned the bomb

Press, 15 October 1982, Page 17

The fears for Europe’s future if Britain banned the bomb

By

JON CONNELL,

defence correspondent, London “Sunday

Times”

Within 24 hours of the British Labour Party's decisive vote for unilateral disarmament at its recent annual conference it was clear that there will be a bitter fight in the party before the policy becomes official. A group of as many as 20 Labour M.P.s began meeting privately to work out a strategy to prevent a move it sees as disastrous for Britain. N.A.T.0.. and the whole security of the West. The group includes several noted defence experts including the former Defence Minister. John Gilbert. Alarm bells have also been ringing in Washington and other N.A.T.O. capitals as people considered the real possibility of unilateralism becoming part of Labour's election manifesto. "When the second largest party in a country as important as Britain takes such a step, that's serious," said one adviser to the Reagan Administration. And N.A.T.O. strategists and diplomats were not slow to forecast the following chilling and rapid course of events. • Led by a Netherlands already flirting with unilateralism. and culminating in West Germany — whose acceptance of nuclear weapons on its soil has always been conditional on the burden being shared — Europe is denuclearised.

• Within a few months of taking office, a British Labour Government scraps the submarine-based Polaris deterrent and cancels its proposed successor, the $17,000 million Trident system. America’s Fill fighterbombers leave their bases at Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire and Lakenheath in Suffolk, the nuclear submarine base at Holy Loch is

closed down, and the N.A.T.O -agreed decision to take 160 American Cruise missiles in Britain is abandoned.

9 Even before the process is complete, the American lobby which holds that Europe has gone “soft" on defence receives the boost it needs and Congress passes legislation to withdraw the 350.000 United States troops in Europe. The motive is partly anger, partly fear that they have been deprived of nuclear protection. Thus America, in alliance jargon, has “decoupled": the nuclear umbrella and the troops intended to guarantee it Will be used have been withdrawn at a stroke. N.A.T.0.. to all intents and purposes, has dissolved. • Faced with a neutral Europe, an economically weak but militarily strong Soviet Union flexes its muscles — over North Sea oil, access by its navy to British ports and a host of trade and technology agreements. The Americans decide to resist the incursions. The result: tension between the super-Powers rises . and Europe becomes a more likely battleground than ever.

The Labour disarmers, naturally, see things differently. They believe that the risk inherent in nuclear weapons outweighs any benefit they might bestow and. moreover, that the threat of

Soviet aggression is now minimal. The Soviet Union has enough trouble on its hands in eastern Europe, they point out.

Britain's aim. they believe, must be to attempt to reduce tension between East and West and the greatest source of that tension is nuclear weapons. As their conference resolution makes clear, they are thus committed to radical change in the alliance's strategy.” "The- immediate priority for N.A.T.O. is to reduce”the pressure to hit the nuclear button and United Kingdom renunciation of nuclear weapons will help to do that."

Quite what the new strategy should be is less clear, but Labour's defence committee is likely to recommend that a future Labour government sets at least three conditions on continued membership.

The first is the instant adoption of a policy of "no (nuclear) first-use"; second, that all the smaller, battlefield nuclear weapons be removed from Europe: and third, that as well as Britain rejecting Cruise missiles. West Germany, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands must follow the example and refuse the whole package of new intermediate range weapons. The disarmers are undecided about what they would put in place of these weapons. Their ideas range from the notion of deploying small groups of “techno-com-mandos” based in local communities and armed with portable anti-tank and antiaircraft weapons to • a

straightforward strengthening of conventional defence. Some argue that there is no need to increase Britain's conventional defences: such a move might be seen as aggressive. Mary Kaldor of Sussex University — one of the most influential mem-'-bers of the defence committee — believes that the conventional imbalance in Europe has been greatly exaggerated. Though N.A.T.O. is undoubtedly short on tanks, she argues it has an almost two-to-one advantage in anti-tank weapons. Sketchy as it is in detail at present, Labour's defence policy will clearly go well beyond simply banning the bomb in Britain. In its own way, what the Labour Party is advocating is every bit as extreme as the stance of the growing isolationist lobby in the United States.

This favours a “fortress America" policy and closer links, for instance, with China and Japan. Indeed, both the isolationists and the disarmers make several similar points. As Europe becomes less politically and economically dependent on the United” States — “the pipeline and interest rates are' just bubbles on the stream,” said one Leftwinger — it is high time defence strategy followed suit.

Devotees of N.A.T.0., however. believe that the two basic pillars of the alliance

remain intact: that the United States needs Europe to stay free: and that Europe needs the American nuclear guarantee

They believe that Russia's trouble with its satellites might actually make it more dangerous. Historically, they point out. its reaction in difficulties has been not to retrench but to expand, on the principle that the source of troubles lies outside. However. N.A.T.O. officials are anxious to defuse concern over N.A.T.O.'s growing dependency on nuclear weapons. While Labour Party conference delegates talked of banning the bomb, the head of N.A.T.O. forces in Europe, American General Bernard Rogers, suggested to members of the Royal United Services Institute in London that defence spending should be raised by 4 per cent a year instead of by the currently agreed 3 per cent. This, he claimed, might enable N.A.T.O. to develop among other things the weaponry capable of hitting Soviet “second-echelon," or back-up. forces, and thus make the early use of nuclear weapons less likely. This could eventually enable the West to reduce the number of weapons in Europe. He was referring to the battlefield nuclear weapons, which many of a very different mind from the Labour Party believe to be the most unnecessary and dangerous part of N.A.T.O.’s arsenal.

Removing battlefield weapons is unlikely to satisfy the disarmers. But the prospect of a nuclear-free Britain is still some way off. The dissident Labour M.P.s have served notice that there is likely to be a protracted struggle.

American troops withdrawal

Europe needs America