Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference — House of Commons, 2015-03-09
Topic: Defense
Julian Murray Lewis (Conservative, Centre-right): I am not sure that we want to start discussing the foreign policy dimension of this now. The only reason I brought Ukraine into this particular debate was in order to focus on the impact on its future of its one-sided disarmament in return for unreliable and undeliverable guarantees from other countries There are two ways of looking at the state of defence, armaments, security and peace in the world. The way to which I subscribe was summarised by an inter-war chairman of the League of Nations disarmament commission, Salvador de Madariaga. He was writing about disarmament, which was very much in vogue in the early 1970s. This is what he wrote in 1973: "The trouble with disarmament was (and still is) that the problem of war is tackled upside-down and at the wrong end… Nations don’t distrust each other because they are armed; they are armed because they distrust each other. And therefore to want disarmament before a minimum of common agreement on fundamentals is as absurd as to want people to go undressed in winter." I must point out that the hon. Member for Islington North, being typically objective about the matter, quoted article VI of the non-proliferation treaty in full. That is very important, because often it is quoted only in part. I wish to focus my remaining couple of minutes on article VI. It states: "Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date" In so far as that affects Britain, it can be seen that we do not engage, and never have engaged, in a nuclear arms race. We have a policy of possessing a minimum strategic nuclear deterrent. Indeed, over the years, successive Governments—both Labour and Conservative—have reduced the number of warheads in that deterrent. And what direct response has there been to each and every one of those unilateral reductions? A big, fat zero. The ending of the nuclear arms race certainly applies to Russia and the United States, but it does not apply to China, Britain or France, because none of us has ever engaged in it Article VI goes on with a commitment to "nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control." That leads me to my final substantive point. There has been a lack of emphasis on the overall picture of what is recommended by article VI. It recommends not only a nuclear-free world, but a conventional arms-free world, so that we do not end up in a situation whereby countries get rid of all of their nuclear weapons and leave conventional arms bristling in the hands of the protagonists. We do not want to create a situation where, unless we are crazy, we abolish one type of deadly weapons system—whose use lies not in the firing of it, but in the possession of it so that nobody starts firing any such weapons—and replace it with a world that is riven by all the old rivalries that bubble away beneath the surface and that would rise to the surface once again if the threat of the balance of terror is removed When we get to that happy state—when we have a world Government and the lion lies down with the lamb—we can be absolutely confident that the moment has come to get rid of those nuclear weapons and, while we are at it, get rid of the navies, the armies, and the air forces as well. Some might say, "That’s nonsense. We don’t want to get rid of those conventional forces, because aggressors would take advantage of that against victim countries." However, if that is what we think those aggressors would do if we get rid of all our conventional arms, we should ask ourselves what they would do if, without resolving those tensions and rivalries, we get rid of the nuclear stalemate and open up the world once again for conventional slaughter on a massive scale.