Aidana
Sapuan
On January
23, Defense Secretary Michael Fallon refused to answer the question about the
test on Trident nuclear missile system, which has fueled a huge debate at the
UK’s House of Commons. The last Trident test-fire, which has been said to be
failed, took place on June 2016 near the Florida coast. US officials claim,
that unarmed Trident missile “had to be diverted into the ocean to
self-destruct” because of an “anomaly”.
The important question here is not
about the safety of the Trident nuclear missile system, which is used by UK
since the year of 19942. After all, the purpose of testing machines
with such capabilities is to identify the failure and fix it in the future.
Neither the test involved any major potential risks, since the missile was
unarmed. The point of interest in
this situation is what are the implications of government’s reluctance to be
open for UK’s civil-military relations (CMR).
Up to this point, the Defense
Secretary Michael Fallon and the Prime-Minister Theresa May adopted the tactic
of leaving the questions raised by Members of Parliament (MPs) about the
missile unanswered. Namely, Fallon repeatedly paraphrases his own words by
saying: “The capability and effectiveness of the UK's independent
nuclear deterrent is not in doubt and we do not comment on the detail of
submarine operations, since it's important to maintain the secrecy of our
deterrent”. Though
Prime-Minister did not comment on the Trident issue by herself, her official
spokeswoman asserts that May was informed about the test, without specifying if
it was a success or failure of the missile. Notably, the news about the failure
of the test were released only 6 months later the test itself. The week after
the failed Trident test, on July 2016, Theresa May urged Parliament to approve
the program on renewal of the same nuclear missile system worth of £40billion.
With 350 majority vote, the
program has entered into force. Does this mean that the main reason for high
officials to cover up the Trident-failure was to reassure MPs about a system’s
serviceability and ensure the program’s approval? The question is left
unanswered unless either May or Fallon give a precise report on the event.
As I have mentioned in the beginning
of this post, the key point here is to explore implications of the ongoing
Trident-debate on CMR in UK. If we were to analyze the government’s
unwillingness to tell the truth to MPs, would its serve as a good
generalizing indicator in assessing UK's CMR. Perhaps, yes. By 4 weeks of
class we have covered theories, which focus on what should be the role of the
military and how it should be controlled (if at all controlled) to preserve a
good state of CMR. But we have a different focus in the situation of UK’s Trident-failure.
What seems to be missing in UK’s CMR in this context, are these: 1) the
agreement between UK’s Cabinet and MPs, 2) accountability to the citizens of
the state. In this regard, though Avant’s theory was built around the US’s
unique electoral system, I think it is also applicable to the case of UK (Owens,
2011). That is, the government has a little consensus with MPs on major
security issues. With the fear of receiving a disapproval of its
initiatives it resorts to hiding the truth from Parliament, as well as the
public itself. Moreover, Giraldo's theoretical framework
fits in here as well (Bruneau and Tollefson, 2008). In
this particular case, the executive (government) prevents the legislature
(House of Commons consisting of MPs) from questing for truth about the
Trident-missile situation. Does this little capacity of legislature to check
and oversight arise from the unique features of UK's political system is
another difficult question though.
Bruneau, Thomas C., and Scott D. Tollefson. 2008.
Who Guards the Guardians and
How: Democratic Civil-Military Relations. University of Texas Press.
Owens, Mackubin Thomas. 2011. US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11:
Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain. New
York: Bloomsbury Academic.
Giraldo,
Jeanne Kinney. 2008. “Legislatures and National Defense: Global Comparisons.”
In Who Guards the Guardians and How: Democratic Civil-Military Relations, eds.
Thomas C. Bruneau and Scott D. Tollefson. University of Texas Press,
34–70.
No comments:
Post a Comment