Hosting US nuclear weapons at RAF Lakenheath only endangers us

The National

5 days ago

It is the first time the US has stationed its own nuclear warheads in the UK for more than 15 years. US nuclear weapons were stored at Lakenheath for much of the Cold War, but removed in 2008.
Neither the US military nor the UK Government has confirmed the presence of US bombs at Lakenheath.
However, open source information from flight trackers showed a flight from Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico – where US Air Force nuclear weapons are based – to Lakenheath on July 18.
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Details regarding the aircraft's flight path and protocols mean it is highly likely to have been carrying US B61-12 gravity bombs. These are 100 times as destructive as the Hiroshima bomb.
This recent development, along with the news that the UK will spend about £1 billion on US nuclear-capable jets based at RAF Marham, indicates the country is regressing into a Cold War posture.
Important questions must therefore be asked about the US and UK's obligations as depository states to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
The NPT was developed in 1968 and presented to the UN by the United States, United Kingdom and Russia. The treaty states that signatories must forgo any efforts to pursue nuclear weapons, with the exception of the five countries it formally recognised as nuclear states: the US, Russia, UK, France, and China.
As well as obliging these countries to pursue disarmament in good faith, the NPT prohibits them from transferring nuclear weapons to non-nuclear states or from providing materials and technology to help develop them.
The manner in which the US has transferred nuclear weapons to military bases across Europe since the 1950s and throughout the Cold War has therefore been highly contentious.
US nuclear weapons were first stationed in the United Kingdom in 1954. In the ensuing decades, they were stationed in Nato countries Germany, Italy, France, Turkey, the Netherlands, Greece, and Belgium. At the peak of nuclear sharing in 1971, the US had more than 7000 nuclear weapons deployed in Europe.
The nuclear sharing arrangement between the US and Nato allies therefore precedes the NPT and continued after its adoption by the UN. In fact, articles I and II of the treaty were co-drafted by the US and the Soviet Union to tolerate nuclear sharing, after the US assured the USSR that no hosting country had launch authority.
It is on the basis that shared nuclear weapons are totally under the control of the US and cannot be used by the host countries that these arrangements are deemed compliant with the letter of the NPT.
But the NPT was written to limit the potential frontiers of nuclear conflict, and as such Nato nuclear sharing violates the spirit, even if not the letter, of the treaty.
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At the height of the Cold War, the stationing of US Pershing missiles in Europe and Nato's 'Able Archer' nuclear exercises led to an escalation of tensions with the USSR that was possibly the closest Europe has come to nuclear conflict until 2024.
The lessons of the Cold War – that nuclear proliferation escalates nuclear tensions – led the US to retrieving most of its armaments so that only around 100 US gravity bombs are stationed in Europe today.
In fact, there is an argument to be made that the Trident system is equally – if not more – problematic under the NPT framework than the US nukes based in England. That is because the US provides the delivery system for the UK's submarine-launched nuclear warheads, which are officially not controlled by the US but supposedly a sovereign, UK-controlled nuclear capability.
The much-vaunted 'independence' of Trident is of course highly dubious, given the heavy reliance of the Royal Navy on US technical, logistical and communications support to operate the missiles.
In any case, without the US provision of technology, the UK would not currently be a nuclear state. The lease of the Trident missiles to the UK could therefore be seen as an act of nuclear proliferation by the United States that violates the NPT in both letter and spirit.
By hosting US nuclear weapons again at Lakenheath and building £15bn more worth of warheads, the UK is regressing to a Cold War posture. This shows that our leaders have not learnt the most important lessons of the nuclear age: that the nuclear arms race does not establish international stability but only worsens tensions and raises the risk of nuclear conflict.
History has shown that preparing for war does not ensure peace – quite the contrary. Those who want peace in Scotland and the UK must loudly oppose our country becoming a nuclear staging post in a prospective new Cold War era – whether that be at Lakenheath, Marham or Faslane.