By Hamish de Bretton-Gordon OBE
The threat of a nuclear attack or accident has rarely been higher. UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres has warned that “humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation”. UK National Security advisor Sir Stephen Lovegrove has said that a breakdown in strategic dialogue between the West and China had raised the risk of an accidental escalation to nuclear war. All this against a backdrop of Putin threatening Nato and Ukraine with a nuclear strike, Xi Jinping’s sabre-rattling against Taiwan, Iran claiming to be nuclear weapon capable, and North Korea working to get there.
And that’s without accounting for the risk of an accident – or worse – at Europe’s largest nuclear power station, Zaporizhzhia, in Ukraine. Russia has been using it as a base from which to launch missiles. The commander on the ground has been reported to be a Major General Vasilyev, who some claim is head of the Russian Army Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Forces. This is the same role I held in the British Army, but I am trained to counter and prevent a CBRN attack. I expect the General’s expertise is more in its offensive use. The global contamination that would result from blowing up the plant doesn’t bear thinking about.
I don’t buy the scepticism that Putin wouldn’t use nuclear capabilities for offensive purposes. He has already attacked the UK with nuclear material, Polonium 210, which was used to murder Alexander Litvinenko. Is it so unlikely that Putin would make use of a nuclear weapon, even a small one, to achieve his goals now? Soviet doctrine, which Russia seems to be following in Ukraine, allows commanders to employ battlefield nuclear weapons to stave off defeat, which is looking more likely by the day in some areas. Our own nuclear arsenal is meant to operate as a deterrent to a direct attack on the West. But can we be sure that even this would stay Putin’s hand, given his complete disregard for collateral damage and civilian casualties in Syria and Ukraine?
During the Cold War, there was education for the public on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. Some will remember the black and white BBC cartoons: far from terrifying our parents and grandparents, they gave them some reassurance. But to be more resilient to a nuclear attack, we need to rethink our entire strategy. The Local Resilience Forums proved their worth during the pandemic, and should be strengthened to cover nuclear as well. We must restore the knowledge and equipment we enjoyed during the Cold War that have fallen into abeyance. We could follow the model of the Nordic countries, South Korea and Singapore, which have prepared networks of shelters and kits. Even school children are trained in how to react to a strike.
It is also crucial that all the checks and balances are in place to ensure that mistakes or miscalculations do not trigger Armageddon, and Nato must work with Russia and China to ensure this. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is our best hope to contain this threat.
It is a tragic irony that the nuclear threat has grown so great at the precise moment when civilian nuclear power has become so essential. It is the most viable way to both save the planet and to ensure domestic security of supply. But this nuclear conundrum must be resolved as a priority. If not everything else vexing us at the moment will prove horrifically irrelevant.
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon OBE is former commander of UK and Nato CBRN Forces. He is now a fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge
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