Undeterred

Daniel Larison writes:

"Upstart Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats on the other hand, has called for its cancellation, arguing that such a program is both inconsistent with President Obama’s calls to work toward eliminating nuclear weapons and is a colossal waste of money that could be better spent on equipping British ground forces – that are suffering severe equipment shortages after a decade of fighting two wars" ~Max Bergmann

This is one place where I have to admit that Clegg doesn’t make much sense by Clegg’s own standards. On the one hand, he is opposed to “default Atlanticism” and calls for what he calls the “repatriation” of foreign policy, but he would effectively want to make Britain more dependent on America’s nuclear arsenal in order to have more funding for conventional forces so that they could better assist the U.S. in wars in which Clegg believes Britain should not be involved.

The strange thing here is that replacing Trident seems far more consistent with the general tenor of Clegg’s foreign policy vision. It’s true that it would “nothing to bolster the ’special relationship’,” as Bergmann says, but Clegg has already made clear how little he thinks that relationship as currently defined matters to Britain. If Britain’s “global importance and military significance to the United States” is to be found in “its possession of a highly capable conventional armed forces that can fight alongside American troops,” isn’t the refusal to replace Trident actually playing into the hands of all those who would prefer to keep Britain as Washington’s reliable yes-man?

Bergmann concludes by saying, “If the US was in charge in the UK defense budget, the Trident would be cut in a heart beat.” If that is right, how is it that Clegg supports a move that would signal such dependence? Just a month ago, Clegg was rightly railing against the major parties for having effectively ceded British sovereignty over matters of war, and yet he argues for a position that could very easily reinforce all of the worst habits of the British government in its relations with the United States concerning matters of war. If Clegg wants to repatriate British foreign policy, as he says he does, scrapping Britain’s nuclear deterrent does not make very much sense.