Last month, the London-based Council on Geostrategy released a report entitled “ Rebuilding the Ladder: Options for Boosting Britain’s Nuclear Posture.” Its central argument, according to an article yesterday in the UK Defense Journal, “is that the UK’s current deterrent posture, built around a single submarine (armed with Trident missiles -cjo) on continuous patrol, was designed for a world that no longer exists, and that Britain is missing a critical ‘rung’ on the escalatory ladder, potentially leaving decision-makers with starkly limited choices in an escalating crisis.”
Peter Watkins, a former director general at the UK Ministry of Defense responsible for strategic policy, deterrence and defence industrial policy matters and one of the report’s co-author, told UKDJ that the report was not a dig at Trident. “We’re not decrying Trident in any way as a strategic deterrent,” he says. “It’s very formidable, and it’s credible in the current strategic circumstances as a deterrent against the most extreme threats.” The problem, as he sees it, is that the world has moved considerably since the key decisions underpinning the current posture were made in the 1980s and 1990s.