New Labour’s representation of its “minimum deterrent” that underpins both its model identity and its ethical credentials also appear unstable. The UK’s foreign policy discourse provides several examples which indicate that its nuclear weapons force size have long been dictated by economic imperatives as much as strategic or now ethical imperatives. However, the UK’s efforts to constitute itself as ethical through the counting bombs narrative is destabilised by its own minimum deterrence doctrine which indicates that the amount necessary to deter is much less than other deterrence doctrines suggest. This would appear to imply to any international observer that it is prudence rather than ethics that motivates the UK’s decision to keep its nuclear force small. Thus, the government appears to want to generate a positive identity for its disarmament efforts that in the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review it explained “do not alter in any way” their nuclear weapons’ effectiveness (MoD, 2010, p. 38). The counting bombs narrative, pushed by the government, may appear to the cynical international observer as an attempt by the UK government to have its cake and eat it. Indeed, the prevalence of this perception may help explain—as Margaret Beckett, (2007) among others have complained—
why the UK’s nuclear cut backs have elicited little international praise, and little reciprocated disarmament.
Concluding the UK’s 21st Century Nuclear Regime of Truth
The UK’s nuclear foreign policy/identity nexus became destabilised following the end of the Cold War and required several discursive modifications to enable the maintenance and renewal of its nuclear weapons system, Trident. The demise of the Soviet Union removed the threat that had: 1) legitimised the UK’s nuclear weapons; 2) allowed the New Labour to divest ethical responsibility for the arms race; and 3) contributed to the ability of the UK to represent nuclear weapons as “disinventable” and thus de-‐legitimise nuclear disarmament. Michael MccGwire (2005) and the anti-‐nuclearist movement saw these developments as offering an opportunity for the UK to generate status by abolishing its nuclear weapons and leading the world out of the nuclear era. Indeed, the UK’s New Labour government also saw this opportunity and constituted itself as the “leader” of global disarmament, however, somewhat ambitiously, they did not see it
as incompatible with renewing its nuclear weapons too. The UK government instead set itself a difficult challenge: trying to produce a stable foreign policy/identity constellation that included the policy of renewing its nuclear weapons, representing itself as a leader of disarmament, while also securitizing proliferation. It managed this through several discursive innovations.
First, Labour reconstituted the global nuclear weapons problem from “disinventable” to solvable but highly complex, whilst also dividing the issue between the urgent security threats posed by the non-‐NPT approved proliferators, and the non-‐urgent long-‐term problem posed by the NWS. Second, this complex problem of the NWS’s was represented as their joint equal responsibility that they must act upon themselves. The New Labour discourse measures ethical responsibility for NWS’ problem by counting bombs. This narrative conjures away differences between the security contexts of the NWS, the type of nuclear weapons possessed, and thus passes the ethical responsibility for the problem onto the other NWS for possessing more nuclear weapons than the UK. Third, using the counting bombs narrative, New Labour
reconstitutes its minimum deterrence doctrine as an ethical nuclear weapons policy allowing it to constitute privileged status for itself amongst the NWS as a “model” state and “leader” of disarmament. Fourth, the UK seeks to securitize the other half of the new nuclear weapons problem: the proliferators. Unlike the NWS nuclear weapons, the proliferation problem demands urgent “robust” action by “global society”. The UK government represents the failure of the global society to properly address this security threat so far as the reason for why it lacks the agency to abolish its own nuclear weapons. This move passed the ethical responsibility for the UK’s own nuclear weapons policy onto the international community. Fifth, the New Labour replaces the void filled by the Soviet Union by taking advantage of nuclear weapons
transcendental utility by sketching threats that the UK’s nuclear weapons may be needed to deter in the future. The utility of nuclear weapons to address future threats generates discursive power from the performative reproduction of Thatcher’s nuclear peace correlation that is beginning to reify in British nuclear discourse. This new rationale is virtually infallible on its own terms; however it lacks the urgency and the international legitimacy of the security discourse and, by virtue of its universal applicability, seemingly legitimises proliferation. Sixth, the UK stabilises this problem by supplementing its logic of legitimacy through emphasising the NPT; specifically, it now relies on a legal logic of legitimacy (derived from its disputed reading of the NPT) and a new prefect logic of legitimacy based on its representation of itself as a
“responsible nuclear power” deserving of special privileges. Seventh, the UK’s 21st century discourse, like its Cold War discourse, helps reconcile its maintenance of nuclear weapons with its peaceful identity by using domesticizing metaphors that normalize its possession of nuclear weapons.
Taken altogether, the UK’s 21st century discourse has done something remarkable: by putting the renewal through (relatively) normal parliamentary procedures, emphasising the legality of its nuclear weapons (rather than their necessity for security), reconstituting the nuclear
weapon problem of the NWS as non-‐urgent, the 21st century UK nuclear weapons discourse has taken an issue once almost the definition of a “Security” issue and normalized it.
As noted above, this foreign policy identity constellation is highly unstable, particularly the UK’s efforts to seek status and get recognition as a leader of nuclear disarmament. Nonetheless, the UK’s nuclear policy was and is certainly enforceable. Indeed, New Labour had a large amount of domestic leeway regarding domestic enforceability: 1) the could count on the Conservative Party’s support for renewal; 2) the nuclear issue had a greatly reduced salience in everyday politics and so the inconsistencies in the discourse received little mainstream attention, and while opponents existed, they lacked the social position to challenge the government ; and 3) the UK economy was still booming when the initial decision was being mooted, muting the normal criticism UK governments receive whenever the cost of its nuclear weapons arise.
However, although the UK will have no problem enforcing the policy, the jury remains out on whether its discursive gymnastics will generate sufficient legitimacy for it not to worsen the NPT’s anti-‐proliferation/disarmament stalemate. It seems rather optimistic to hope the
international audience will let the UK eat its nuclear cake and swallow its disarmament rhetoric too.