The Supreme Deterrent
By ANGUS MAUDE, MP THE annual arguments about defence policy have started early this year. Although the Govern- ment's White Paper setting forth the assumptions and policy on which the Defence Estimates are based is not due for about six weeks, the experts are already busy issuing advice to the politicians and the public.
The Suez debacle has contributed to this inter- est in two ways. First, the preparation and execu- tion of the undertaking prevented the carrying out of the complete reappraisal and reorganisa- tion of our defence system that is now long over- due. Secondly, the operation itself and the strategic implications of its failure have raised innumerable questions to which answers are urgently needed.
Not much can yet be said about the lessons of the operation itself, although the post-mortem is bound to be protracted and unhappy. Evidence is steadily accumulating, from war correspon- dents and others who were there (including some exceedingly embittered Frenchmen), to show that the invasion was far from being the brilliant military success that the Government was anxious to advertise. It is, of course, true that Port Said was occupied with very few British casualties; but for all the good its occupation did us, our troops might just as well have stayed in Cyprus and Malta and sustained no casualties at all. The picture that emerges is one of nervous politicians and over-cautious commanders dragging their feet in an expedition to which speed and boldness could have brought total success. Two important lessons can be learned from it. The first is that a government which enters a war with an admixture of doubt and half-guilty inhibitions is most unlikely to wage it effectively; and the second is that the use of National Service men in an opera- tion of this kind has political implications which are extremely dangerous to the success of the undertaking.
But it is with the wider questions of defence policy arising from our para-military defeat in Egypt that most commentators are now con- cerned. It has long been obvious that our defence effort has been spread too wide and too thin to be really effective at any point; while this has no doubt been' due in part to inter-Service rivalries, it must have been primarily caused by an absence of high-level decisions on foreign policy and strategy. In brief, no one has been will- ing to decide what to cut. Now, apart from the lunatic fringe which believes that we should strip ourselves of nearly all our defences and 'leave it all to the United Nations,' there is no lack of advocates for each and every alternative cut that presents itself. Some would have us abolish the Navy, some think the Army has outlived its use- fulness in the nuclear age, some see little use for fighter planes in the face of supersonic bombers and guided missiles. These are technical questions for experts, and they are in any case of secondary importance. Certainly they 'must be answered, but they cannot be usefully answered until some- one has decided what kinds of military action, with what allies and against what enemies, we are prepared to undertake in the futtire. And these are not really technical questions, but questions of foreign policy.
These questions, translated into terms of defence policy, are generally variants on the choice between 'integration' and 'going it alone'; or rather, since no one believes that Britain can in fact go it quite alone, on the choice between different degrees of integration with our allies. Any further measure of integration must, if it is to result in a relief to our total defence burden, involve the handing over to our allies of some part of the responsibility for our own defence. Some people would like us to contract out of the development of guided missiles, for example, and there are many alternative suggestions. I do not propose to discuss these alternatives in detail, but only to mention one possible—and superficially attractive—renunciation which I believe the Government ought in no circum- stances to make.
It is absolutely imperative that the Government should not be deflected from its announced inten- tion to carry out the test explosion of a British hydrogen bomb.
On June 7 last Sir Anthony Eden stated in the House of Commons that, since the holding of tests 'is an essential part' of the process of provid- ing ourselves with thermo-nuclear weapons, the Government had decided to 'carry out a limited number of nuclear test explosions in the megaton range.' These, he said, would take place during the first half of 1957 in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean.
Although there is no overt reason to suppose that the tests will not proceed according to plan it is possible to think of quite a number of considera- tions which might now make the abandonment of the tests more attractive to the Government than before. I would be a fairly cheap way to gain moral kudos with the high-minded neutrals and allies who disapproved so deeply of the Suez adventure; it would avoid a lot of politi- cal unpleasantness at homo at a time when the Government is rather sensitive to unpleasantness; and it could be made a quid pro quo for some attractive concession or aid from America.
The renunciation could be explained away on the grounds that our chief ally can do all the thermo-nuclear deterring that is necessary to protect us, and that, since we already have the hydrogen bomb anyway, we do not really need to test it. The second argument would not, of course, stand up in the face of Sir Anthony's earlier statement that testing is an essential part of the process of development, but it has a superficial persuasiveness.
The other argument is stronger, and is the one which it is most essential to combat. We cannot afford to leave the thermo-nuclear weapon to the United States for the simple reason that this would, in the long run, remove all flexibility from our foreign policy. To put it bluntly, our survival would be guaranteed only at the price 'of our becoming an American satellite.
It is probably true that, during the next few years, we could rely on the certainty that America would drop a hydrogen bomb on any country that dropped one on western Europe—although it is not so much we who need to know it as the potential aggressor. But can we rely on this for ever? Do we even want to have to? Palmerston once said: 'It is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that country is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.' If we retain any faith at all in our traditional policy of the Balance of Power; if we want to keep a reasonable potential flexibility in our foreign policy; if we want to build up any sort of position in western Europe—we must possess, and be seen to possess, our own thermo- nuclear weapon. Without it, we could not hope to remain neutral in a world war even if we wanted to; with it, we just might be able to do so.
We are, it is true, amply supplied with atom bombs. But the hydrogen bomb is something of quite a different kind. It is a total destroyer, almost guaranteed to liquidate the country which becomes its target. The country that possesses it is always a factor to be reckoned with, and certainly one whose interests are entitled to respect. A country that does not possess it is. in the last resort, a dwarf In a world of giants. To cancel our tests might be a fine moral gesture. It might even help to secure agreement between Russia and America to ban further tests of their bombs. But both would still possess the bomb. Aro we any less likely to become a target if we renounce the power to retaliate?
I know it will be argued that advocacy of this kind stems from a wistful yearning for a vanished national prestige. There is far more to it than that. The hydrogen bomb is the supreme deterrent, the world's greatest hope of avoiding a third world war. 1, for one, would feel "happierabout the prospects of avoiding such a war if possession of the hydrogen bomb were not limited to Russia and the United States. It will also be argued that if we let ours off, half a dozen other countries will soon be doing the same, so that the amount of fall-out will become rapidly more dangerous. Bat we are still some way from the danger point, and some international control and limitation of tests may soon be practicable. In spite of all the arguments to the contrary, I remain convinced that Britain's interests demand, even more strongly than before the Suez crisis, that we should possess a tested hydrogen bomb of our own. We may then be able to have a foreign policy.
(This is the first of a series of articles giving contrasting viewpoints on Defence. Next week : Sir Edward Boyle, MP.]'
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