Last May, then defence secretary Grant Shapps gave a revealing but little-noticed speech at a military conference in London.
Shapps deprecated people for saying “there’s no point in our nuclear deterrent”, insisting “I know they are wrong”.
He asked: “Would Ben Wallace” – his predecessor – “and I have been so willing to be able to play a leadership role in Ukraine without the insurance of our Continuous at Sea Deterrent?”, referring to Trident nuclear missiles on board Britain’s submarines.
He further asked: “Would UK defence have given Ukraine … Storm Shadows needed to defeat Russia’s invasion, without our Continuous at Sea Deterrent?”
Answering the questions himself, Shapps said that “gifting Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine have enabled our brave Ukrainian friends to push back Russia”.
The decision to supply long-range missiles was “made easier” because of the UK’s possession of nuclear arms, he added.
Shapps was saying something remarkable – that British nuclear weapons provide the UK with the confidence and “insurance” that Russia will not retaliate for Ukraine’s use of UK-supplied Storm Shadows.
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Escalation
On 20 November, Storm Shadow cruise missiles supplied by Britain were used by Ukraine for the first time inside Russia. The strikes were personally approved by prime minister Keir Starmer, the British press reported.
Up to a dozen such missiles were fired at Kursk region, 50 kilometres or so inside Russia, targeting a Russian military command post.
With a range of around 250 km, Storm Shadow missiles are a “long range deep strike weapon” that can be used “against high value fixed or stationary targets such as hardened bunkers and key infrastructure”, states MBDA, which makes the weapons.
The British weapons were used a day after Ukraine fired US-made long-range missiles against Russian territory, following US president Joe Biden’s approval.
Russian president Vladimir Putin had long warned that Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles would mean Nato countries were “at war with Russia”.
In September, he called this “a red line”. Indeed, the day after the Storm Shadows hit Kursk, Russia fired an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time in Ukraine, on the city of Dnipro.
Who’s retaliating against whom?
Ukraine’s use of British long-range missiles came two months after Putin announced changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine.
Moscow now reserves the right to authorise a nuclear response to a conventional attack on Russian territory if the attacking state is supported militarily by a nuclear power.
This policy is clearly targeted at Ukraine being supported by nuclear powers the US, UK and France.
The UK media have universally denounced the dangers of Russia’s change in nuclear posture. The Economist referred to Putin’s “nuclear threats”. Sky News asked: “Is Putin ready to reach for the nuclear button?”
The Times similarly asked: “Will Russia use nuclear weapons?” while the Sun called Russia’s new nuclear doctrine Putin’s “drastic WW3 escalation”.
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Ignored by British media
In fact, Moscow’s nuclear policy is not so different to Britain’s or Nato’s.
British journalists could have pointed out that in 2021, Boris Johnson’s Conservative government changed the UK’s own stance on the use of nuclear weapons.
Since then, Whitehall has formally claimed the right to use nuclear arms not only in response to nuclear threats but against enemies possessing chemical and biological weapons or “emerging technologies that could have a comparable impact”.
Not content with this much broader potential use for its nuclear arms, the British government now also threatens to use its nuclear arsenal against non-nuclear weapons states that are said to be heading in the direction of acquiring nuclear weapons – a thinly-veiled threat to Iran.
None of this has featured in UK media coverage of Putin’s dangerous change in nuclear doctrine.
Useable weapons
The UK media has been so busy vilifying Russia for seeing nuclear weapons as useable arms, it has failed to report that this is also Western policy.
As security expert Paul Rogers has written for Declassified, “Nuclear arms have always been seen as useable weapons for fighting ‘limited’ nuclear wars by Nato as a whole, and by the UK and France”.
Rogers has traced the history of this preparedness to use nuclear arms and has documented how Britain has also been willing to use its nuclear arsenal in ‘out-of-area’ operations, in conflict with countries far from Nato’s borders.
Neither does British or NATO policy rule out being the first to use nuclear weapons. “Successive British governments have studiously avoided speaking in specific terms”, Rogers has noted.
The UK’s nuclear policy is clearly on the minds of British military planners when it comes to Russia. In a speech last week, Britain’s military chief, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, said: “The UK’s nuclear deterrent is the one part of our inventory of which Russia is most aware and has more impact on Putin than anything else.”
Storm Shadow missiles have previously been used by Saudi Arabia in Yemen, and by Britain itself in Libya, Iraq and the Gulf. Britain’s Ministry of Defence has long refused to say how many missiles it has supplied to Ukraine.
It did not respond to a request for comment.
