National resilience: A strategic advantage for deterrence
The Memorandum | No. 09.2025
Before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the debate about British nuclear weapons was infantile. The critics of the ‘continuously at sea deterrent’, fortified by their belief that the principal threat to the homeland came from global terrorism, said that Trident D5 missiles would not stop suicide bombers. Their opponents asserted, with equal accuracy, that we had no idea what was around the corner and that we should be prepared for any eventuality.
In the eyes of many, the collective so-called ‘West’ has been self-deterred over the last three years. Free and open nations possessed of nuclear weapons proved to be just that: liberal to the point of utopianism.
Despite Russia’s intervention in Georgia in 2008 and its annexation of Crimea in 2014, neither group seemed aware that we might have already turned the corner – or at least be approaching the bend. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was a massive deterrence failure for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). NATO countries had sent training missions to the country and their intelligence agencies gave public and clear warning of the imminence of the attack but, without clear guarantees or credible indications of resolve, they failed to stop Vladimir Putin, President of Russia.
Nuclear-weapons owning members, not just the United States (US) but also France and the United Kingdom (UK), now faced exactly the set of circumstances for which nuclear deterrence had been designed: an aggressive Russia acting in breach of the United Nations’ (UN) Charter resulting in a major war in Europe.
Instead, it was not NATO or the US which invoked the threat of nuclear weapons, but Russia. In the eyes of many, the collective so-called ‘West’ has been self-deterred over the last three years. Free and open nations possessed of nuclear weapons proved to be just that: liberal to the point of utopianism. Certainly, they were risk-averse, allowing the aggressor the power to threaten escalation while ceding it themselves.
Nowhere has the silence on the strategy underpinning the possession of nuclear weapons been more striking than in Britain. Calls for increases in defence spending have not been matched by any clear identification of the capabilities which the UK should prioritise if the money were forthcoming. Britain’s conventional forces are partly dependent on the US for intelligence, surveillance and target acquisition capabilities and their capacity to defend the UK has for a long time taken second place to expeditionary warfare. The press, looking at a war in Ukraine, which has required mass mobilisation as well as technological innovation, has stressed the small size of Britain’s regular army, which – at 73,000 and falling – is the smallest it has been since the outbreak of the French revolutionary wars in 1792 (even if it is a bogus comparison, given technological developments).
It is particularly inappropriate when the government is investing in the renewal of the very weapon that was designed to replace mass with the acme of firepower. In 1957, Duncan Sandys, then Minister of Defence, was able to present the decision for Britain to acquire its own nuclear weapon as a cost-saving exercise which would also allow it to end national service. After 2010, when the Conservatives returned to power and once again sought to economise on defence, they cut conventional capabilities while setting about the procurement of the third generation of Britain’s nuclear weapons and their launch platforms.
The costs of replacing the Vanguard nuclear powered ballistic submarines (SSBNs) with a larger class of submarine, the Dreadnought, meant that the British nuclear deterrent could absorb just under 20% of the defence budget at the peak of its replacement. Its in-service running costs are put at 6% of the overall defence budget. A decade and more ago, some could see the financial road crash facing defence procurement by the early 2020s, but that was a problem for another administration.
If nuclear weapons are kept in a box labelled political, or even too difficult, they are not integrated in national strategy. That phrase – national strategy – is not just about the debates behind closed doors between government and its service and intelligence chiefs (although they are of course vital) but also about public ownership.
The decision by Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, in February 2025 to raise defence spending to 2.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is marching in step with the growing burden of the Trident replacement. On one reading, enhanced conventional capabilities have been the opportunity cost of prioritising nuclear weapons.
To what end? It might have seemed reasonable to postpone answering that question during the ‘global war on terror’. But war in Europe in 2022 made the need to do so pressing and in 2025 the Trump administration has made it urgent. The long-signalled US pivot away from Europe and towards the Western Pacific will probably see a significant withdrawal of conventional American forces away from the continent. With doubts creeping in about the solidity of Article Five, Britain’s ability to deter adversaries will be under the most intense scrutiny by its enemies than it has been for decades. It is therefore time for the public debate on nuclear deterrence to be re-energised. To be effective, deterrence relies on the credibility of a weapon’s use.
If nuclear weapons are kept in a box labelled political, or even too difficult, they are not integrated in national strategy. That phrase – national strategy – is not just about the debates behind closed doors between government and its service and intelligence chiefs (although they are of course vital) but also about public ownership. The government’s first duty may be defence, as much current commentary is reiterating, but that means that the population at large has a role.
In traditional nuclear thinking, the public was the principal hostage in making deterrence effective. Cold War nuclear strategy made a distinction which many thought artificial – between counter-force capabilities and counter-city strikes. The former were designed to hit principally military targets, and it is these ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons which Putin seems to have invoked when he has threatened to escalate in Ukraine. The UK’s capability in this respect is now nugatory, having disposed of tactical nuclear weapons in the 1990s. Britain’s SSBNs are designed for counter-city strikes. States with these weapons talk of trading New York for Moscow. The threat is that of mutually assured destruction.
Domestic resilience is therefore central to credible deterrence – particularly the British version, which in its current form stresses that Britain would be a ‘second finger’ on the trigger, for which the US would be the first. In other words, a British strike is probably not to be a first strike, when the purpose might well be counter-force, but a second strike which would seek to have more devastating consequences in a ladder of escalation.
The vocabulary of nuclear deterrence is terrifying and morally outrageous in its implications, but it is necessary when the alternative could be the reality of a far more destructive conventional war in Europe. Current calculations put the global death toll of the Second World War at over 60 million, of whom 210,000 were killed by the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan.
Britain has become so unused to these sorts of discussions that many doubt that the public is ready for such a debate. But if there is no debate, there can be no public understanding or public ownership. The example of Finland, especially since it has joined NATO, is now regularly and rightly cited as an example of a state which has enhanced its deterrence through societal ownership of its defence. The other Scandinavian countries are not far behind, and neither France nor Germany took national service off the statute book when they suspended conscription a quarter of a century ago. Both Emmanual Macron, President of France, and Friedrich Merz, likely Germany’s next Chancellor, have put it back on their national agendas.
That is not the case in Britain. National service would require primary legislation and, at this state of the debate, talk of its return – as Rishi Sunak found out – would invite ridicule. The armed forces are not keen, despite the army’s awareness that its current peacetime strength would be exhausted by two to three months’ worth of fighting in Ukraine. Press commentary, which looks back to the blancoing of belts and polishing of brasses, to drill and peeling potatoes, uses ridicule in ways that are themselves ridiculous. However, such decisions cannot be postponed until the outbreak of war. Ukraine’s biggest challenge, and one to which it has not proved equal while simultaneously fighting for its life, is how to manage its manpower.
For the Euro-Atlantic democracies, for many of whom war in Ukraine still seems geographically remote, there are other ways to create strategic advantage through resilience. Many of the skills and competences required by modern war lie in civil society, from doctors to software engineers. The growth of professional forces has left the reserves under-funded and under-strength. The importance of cyber-security and its practice in our daily lives are direct contributions to one form of national resilience which we execute with little reflection. And hiding in plain sight, but even less well recognised, was the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, whose effectiveness relied on bottom-up responses at community level much more than it did on government action. Here is a lesson with deterrent effect which should remind us that defence begins at home.
Prof. Sir Hew Strachan is Professor of International Relations, University of St Andrews and a British military historian.
This article is part of the Council on Geostrategy’s Strategic Advantage Cell.
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