submarines

Houses of Parliament

The outcome of the Trident vote will not be the last word

Parliament has today voted in favour of the government’s plans to replace the four Vanguard class submarines with Successor submarines, based upon continuous submarine patrolling. This vote may have provided the country’s new Prime Minister Theresa May a quick and immediate opportunity to demonstrate business as usual, a new government keen to get things done post Brexit.

Deterrence, Disarmament, Non-Proliferation and UK Trident

This discussion paper is the fourth in a series and outlines the emergence of Britain's nuclear deterrence posture and thinking over the last seventy years, and how successive governments have sought to balance this with effective non-proliferation diplomacy.  Professor Simpson's paper outlines the evolution of Britain's twin-track approach of trying to address its own national security whilst strengthening global security through multilateral nuclear disarmament, and asks whether this approach has a sustained future ahead.