The UK’s strategic defence review risks normalising nuclear warfare. Don’t believe the PR hype: these weapons are immoral, irrational and catastrophic
Plans by Keir Starmer’s government to modernise and potentially expand Britain’s nuclear weapons arsenal, unveiled in the 2025 strategic defence review (SDR), seriously undermine international non-proliferation efforts. They will fuel a global nuclear arms race led by the US, China and Russia. And they increase the chances that lower-yield, so-called tactical nukes will be deployed and detonated in conflict zones. This dangerous path leads in one direction only: towards the normalisation of nuclear warfare.
These unconscionable proposals are a far cry from the days when Robin Cook, Labour’s foreign secretary from 1997 to 2001, championed unilateral nuclear disarmament and helped scrap the UK’s airdropped gravity bombs. They are a continuation of a redundant, inhuman, immoral, potentially international law-breaking deterrence policy that cash-strapped Britain can ill afford, will struggle to implement at cost and on time, and which perpetuates illusions about its global power status.
Starmer’s justification for spending an additional £15bn on nuclear warheads for four as yet un-built Dreadnought-class submarines, whose price tag is £41bn and rising, is that the world – and the threat – has changed. But in terms of nuclear arms, it really hasn’t. Even as cold war tensions receded, the eight other known nuclear-weapons states – the US, Russia, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel – clung on to their arsenals. Some expanded them.
Today, as the global security environment deteriorates again, governments that ignored an obligation to pursue nuclear disarmament “in good faith” under article six of the 1970 non-proliferation treaty (NPT) are finding new reasons to keep on doing so. Britain must not compound its decades-long failure to honour the spirit of the treaty. The SDR’s assertion that “continued UK leadership within the NPT is imperative” seems disingenuous, given government intentions.
The SDR concedes the NPT, up for review next year, is close to failing. “Historical structures for maintaining strategic stability and reducing nuclear risks have not kept pace with the evolving security picture,” it says. “With New Start [the 2010 US-Russia strategic arms reduction treaty] set to expire in February 2026, the future of strategic arms control – at least in the medium term – does not look promising.”
This is a Trident missile-sized understatement. Nuclear proliferation is once again a huge problem. The US will spend an estimated $2tn over 30 years on weapons development. Donald Trump said in February he wants to “denuclearise”. Guess what! He’s doing the opposite. The White House is seeking to raise the National Nuclear Security Administration’s annual weapons budget by 29%, to $25bn, while slashing funding for the arts, sciences and foreign aid. That’s on top of several multibillion-dollar Pentagon weapons programmes.
China’s nuclear strike force has more than doubled in size since 2020, with some pointed at Taiwan. Russia’s expanding capabilities include a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, recently fired into Ukraine. And Trump’s Golden Dome plan upends prior undertakings on anti-missile defence. By joining the proliferators, hypocritical Britain sends a cynical signal to Iran, Saudi Arabia and others whose supposed nuclear ambitions it opposes.
One future scenario is especially chilling: the possible reintroduction by Britain of air-launched nuclear weapons for the first time since Cook scrapped them. This could involve buying US F-35A fighters and arming them with US-designed B61-12 bombs. These bombs have variable yields and could be used tactically, against a battlefield target, a command HQ or a city. They could be launched remotely, using unmanned drones. They bring the prospect of nuclear warfare measurably closer.
Starmer is leaning heavily on the review’s claim that Russian “nuclear coercion” is the biggest menace facing the UK. Even if true, no amount of nuclear missiles and bombs may suffice if political will is lacking to directly confront Vladimir Putin by, for example, deploying Nato conventional forces to defend Ukraine and responding forcefully to hybrid attacks on Britain….
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After the truth-shower 