Nuclear Weapons 171 - U.K. Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn Will Not Use Nuclear Weapons If Elected Prime Minister
Jeremy Corbyn is a British politician who is in Parliament representing Islington North. His political position would be considered to be left-wing. He has come out against the austerity program of the current British government and in favor of pursuing tax avoiding corporations and individuals. He recently became the leader of the Labor Party and Leader of the Opposition in the British Parliament. If his party wins enough seats in Parliament, he may become Prime Minister. He is staunchly anti-war and anti-nuclear weapons.
Corbyn has publicly stated that if he were Prime Minister, he would never use nuclear weapons. He has encouraged public resistance to the continued existence of the British Trident submarine base in Scotland and fought in Parliament against spending billions of dollars on upgrading the British nuclear deterrent capability.
His nuclear policy position has drawn criticism from his Labour Party's own defence spokeswoman. She said that it had been a long-standing policy of the Labour Party to support the Trident nuclear weapons system in Britain. Corbyn tried to get a vote of the members of the Labour Party against the Trident system but had to pull the vote due to opposition from Labour members in Parliament and major trade unions.
Until now, the chiefs of Britain's armed forces have always refused to answer questions about the use of their Trident nuclear missile system which has about two hundred nuclear warheads because they insisted that it was not a military matter but a political matter.
Recently, General Sir Nicholas Houghton, chief of the defence staff in Britain has departed from this long time tradition. On a BBC television program, he was asked if he was concerned about Corbyn's statement that if he became Prime Minister, he would never use nuclear weapons. Houghton said that Corbyn’s position undermined “the credibility of deterrence. The whole thing about deterrence rests on the credibility of its use. When people say ‘you are never going to use the deterrent’, what I say is you use the deterrent every second, of every minute, of every day. The purpose of the deterrent is that you don’t have to use it because you successfully deter.”
The problem with this point of view is that the existence of a nuclear deterrence does not really constitute the use of it as a weapons system. One of the primary threats against British national security today is ISIS. ISIS will not be deterred at all by the British nuclear capability. Another major threat is Russia. It is highly unlikely that Russia would attack just Britain with nuclear weapons. Britain is an ally of the U.S. which has over four thousand warheads aimed at Russia. If Russia used nuclear weapons on Britain, they would have to expect retaliation from the U.S. So the small British Trident missile force is redundant. Next year the government will ask Parliament to vote on a new Trident system which would cost two hundred and fifty billion dollars over its lifetime. This is an enormous expenditure for a system which would probably never be used and, if it were, human civilization would have been destroyed anyway.
A number of prominent British politicians and ex-military men have publicly stated that the use of nuclear weapons by Britain would basically be stupid and useless. Regardless of the fact that Corbyn has been unable to get the Labour Party to publicly endorse his nuclear policy position, he is right and, hopefully, it time the British people will accept and support his position.
