This interview was conducted by the Remote Control project. 

Tara McCormack is Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Leicester.

In this interview, Dr McCormack discusses the British military interventions in Libya, Iraq and Syria, the shift that these interventions mark away from the longstanding Royal Prerogative on war-making and how the use of remote warfare is effecting the democratic oversight of the use of military assets in conflict.

Q. In Britain, the power to declare war and deploy troops in conflict is one of the few remaining Royal Prerogatives. Recently, however, British military interventions in Iraq, Syria and Libya were all first put to a vote in the House of Commons. Did these cases mark a move towards greater democratic oversight of the decision to go to war in Britain?

The Royal Prerogative (RP) is a set of (not fully defined) powers that used to belong to the Monarch but are exercised by the government and Prime Minister. In essence, the RP allows the Prime Minister to make a decision without consulting Parliament or even his/her Cabinet. The power to commit armed forces to a conflict is one important RP power. Since the end of the Cold War the RP has been seen to be increasingly problematic for a number of reasons to do with a decline in trust in government and broader problems of legitimacy.

The power to take the country to war has been seen as particularly problematic and during the 90s and 00s there were a number of Parliamentary debates and reports that considered this question of the Prime Minister’s power to declare war without broader Parliamentary authorisation.

However, historically when Britain has gone to war, although Parliament has not voted on the decision it has been customary for some kind of debate to take place, often as the military action has begun. This was so for the Kosovo (1999) war. In March 2003, under pressure from a number of MPs, Tony Blair agreed to a vote on a motion about British military intervention in Iraq on the eve of the American invasion.

The Conservative Party pledged that if they came to power would make it a matter of course that Parliament would have a substantive vote on taking Britain to war, and this was done over the Libyan intervention and then Syria. The debate and vote to go to war in Syria received a great deal of media coverage and was reported on hour by hour as indeed was the vote to go to war and even the first military planes that flew.

This new parliamentary convention on authorising military intervention is now well established.  It is a very important convention as, in principle, this new parliamentary convention gives democratic authority and legitimacy to decisions to commit British armed forces to war.

However, at the same time there has been another significant trend in warfare, and that is that governments are increasingly using methods of intervention that are in essence ‘off the books’, for example the increasing use of special forces, or drones. Paul Rogers has called these modes of intervention ‘security by remote control’. This is an excellent phase as it highlights the way in which these methods of intervention allow governments to intervene militarily but without the clear lines of public and democratic accountability that more traditional methods entail.

Q. Why do you think there was this shift towards making the process of going to war more democratic under the Conservative Party?

The shift away from the Royal Prerogative (RP) has been an on-going process since the end of the Cold War for the reasons I mentioned in my first answer, in particular questions of trust and legitimacy combined with a number of observable changes in voting behaviour, e.g. falling voter turnout, increased voter volatility and so on. What we see from the mid-90s are a number of parliamentary debates and reports about what is perceived to be the problem of the RP in this context. Of course, the decision to take a country to war is something that is particularly problematic in a context in which there seems to be a loss of trust in the government.

I think that the reason why the Conservative Party made it an explicit pledge was not that Hague and Cameron (for example) were greater democrats than Blair and New Labour, but because of this on-going debate within the political elite about the RP.

Q. Could the high financial, human and regional geopolitical costs of the Iraq War may have also contributed to the shift away from the Royal Prerogative?

I do think that the Iraq War has been significant in terms of British politics certainly. The Iraq War, the ‘dodgy dossier’ and Blair’s claims exacerbated the problem of trust and raised a question over British military intervention.

However, I do want to stress that the underlying dynamics behind the new parliamentary convention are pre-Iraq, e.g. loss of trust in government, as is clear from the debates and discussions in the House of Commons.

I think it is also worth remembering that many of our politicians have ‘mis-remembered’ the Iraq debate and the immense political support there was for this most disastrous intervention.   Tony Blair did hold a debate and vote on the Iraq intervention (albeit on the eve of military action). There was strong support for the intervention. But there were some brave voices arguing against the intervention whatever the ‘evidence’.

It is easy now to blame Tony Blair and his ‘dodgy dossier’ for all the ills in British politics.

Q. So how is this use of ‘remote warfare’ affecting the democratic oversight of armed conflict in the UK?

I think that the shift towards what Paul Rogers has called ‘remote control warfare’ means that there is less democratic oversight of armed conflict in the UK. This is because methods of intervention such as the use of special forces, drones and also cyber warfare are carried out with little public scrutiny or political debate.

It is not that information about these methods of intervention is impossible to find out, it can be found out through Freedom of Information requests, and sometimes Parliamentary questions and similar. However, compared to the very public political debate and media coverage about what might be called traditional modes of military intervention, there is very little public knowledge or scrutiny or indeed, crucially, parliamentary debate.

Q. Due to remote warfare often being highly secretive, public knowledge of the UK’s use of this tactic may be limited. But is there any reliable data on the British public’s views of remote warfare and the democratic oversight of this practice? For example, are there any opinion polls on the British public’s attitudes to security, armed forces and democratic oversight?

That is a really important question. As far as I am aware this is not something that has been fully investigated yet but it is something that needs to be looked at.

There are polls and surveys that look at public attitudes to armed conflict. Basically, British people are reluctant to intervene militarily (the idea of the ‘post-heroic’ West is more or less true) in particular for ‘wars of choice’.  So for example, a recent Gallup International poll found that only 27% percent of British people would be willing to fight for their country. A YouGov poll found a minority in favour of Britain attempting to influence events around the world.

Interestingly, however, the YouGov poll has found that whilst the majority of people oppose sending regular troops to somewhere like Syria, 60% support airstrikes or use of drones (note this is against ISIS not Assad).

This suggests that public perception is that intervention by remote control is less consequential than conventional intervention. However, I would suggest that this is not the case and that the consequences of warfare by remote control need to be more openly discussed.

Q. The Foreign Affairs Committee’s (FAC) recent report on the 2011 Libyan military intervention acknowledged the presence of UK special forces currently operating in Libya, which is arguably a surprising move given the ‘culture of no comment’ surrounding UK special forces. Looking to the future, do you feel that this may offer some grounds for optimism or do you think that the erosion of the democratic oversight of Britain’s military actions will continue?

Yes I noticed that and also that the FAC report specifically mentioned that this is not really publicly scrutinised. The thing about ‘remote control warfare’ is not that it is totally unacknowledged, information does come out in reports (such as the FAC report on Libya), FoI requests (the website Drone Wars is very good on this) but it is very limited. Compare, for example, the high level of debate and discussion given to Britain’s decision to launch airstrikes on Syria, and of course the vote under the new Parliamentary Convention.

I just do not know the answer to the final part of the question, it depends on so many factors. Certainly it is something that I think is very important to get into the public realm as much as possible.

Young people walk past an anti-nuclear weapons protest outside the NPT Review Conference, Geneva, 2008 Source: BANG (Flickr)

The dropping of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is now almost 70 years behind us and, current rhetoric over Ukraine aside, the Cold War ended almost a quarter-century ago. This is how we now understand nuclear weapons – as a threat of the past, more important in history class than in the headlines. But this is not the case. While we have made admirable progress on disarming and dismantling, particularly the arsenals of the US and Soviet successor states, thousands of nuclear weapons still exist and progress on disarmament is too sporadic for comfort. The threat of nuclear proliferation is high and many current nuclear weapons exist within hostile regions or on trigger alert. Nuclear risks are more prevalent than we’d like to believe. Whether we like or not, accidents can happen.

The dramatic decrease in public awareness and engagement in the nuclear weapons debate since the 1980s poses a risk to our future, as younger generations and future policy shapers are less familiar with the challenges posed by nuclear weapons and will be as they start to take over the reins of governance. But nuclear weapons are too dangerous for a disconnect of this magnitude.

It wasn’t always this way

Anti-nuclear rally Pennsylvania, USA 1979. Source: Wikipedia

We haven’t always been so disconnected from the bomb. US arms control expert William Hartung describes:

There was a time when nuclear weapons were a significant part of our national conversation. Addressing the issue of potential atomic annihilation was once described by nuclear theorist Herman Kahn as “thinking about the unthinkable,” but that didn’t keep us from thinking, talking, fantasizing, worrying about it, or putting images of possible nuclear nightmares (often transmuted to invading aliens or outer space) endlessly on screen.

Perhaps it was the imminent threat during the Cold War that compelled millions across the world to actively protest against nuclear weapons. For example, in the United Kingdom, the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp was established in 1981 to protest the deployment of US nuclear-armed cruise missiles at the Greenham Common Air Force base. While in June 1982 in the United States, one million people came together in New York’s Central Park to call for an end to the nuclear arms race in the “Nuclear Freeze” protest.

The looming nuclear threat seemed to fade away after the Cold War. Progress on arms control led to complacency with the international treaties that were in place to protect us against nuclear dangers. Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), for example, the nuclear weapon states (UK, US, China, France, Russia) are obligated to work towards disarmament. However, as absurd as it sounds, there is no universal agreement on what that would quite look like, or how to get there.

Moreover, we’ve witnessed three countries become overtly nuclear armed states since the Cold War: India, Pakistan and North Korea. It’s a small percentage in comparison to states that don’t have the bomb, but when it comes to nuclear weapons, even a small percentage is a terrifying one.

International norms of non-use and the “nuclear taboo” have led us not to worry about that small percentage of states. Eric Schlosser’s recent book Command and Control, however, alarmingly points out that there have been several nuclear “near misses” in the United States alone that we as a public have little to no knowledge of. Schlosser writes:

Right now thousands of missiles are hidden away, every one of them is an accident waiting to happen, a potential act of mass murder. They are out there waiting, soulless and mechanical, sustained by our denial – and they work.

Is it simply that the public is in denial about nuclear weapons? A diverse range of psychological studies conducted in the 1980s – including Nuclear attitudes and reactions: Associations with depression, drug use, and quality of life; Nuclear War as a Source of Adolescent Worry; and Gender, sex roles, and attitudes toward war and nuclear weapons – demonstrate a desire to understand society’s feelings about nuclear weapons at the height of the Cold War.

In more recent years, there have been similar studies conducted in reference to climate change, another somewhat abstract and imminent global threat. And yet, while the nuclear threat is the still around, we’re not as concerned about nuclear weapons as we were 30 years ago. It could be, as Schlosser suggests, denial. It seems that we have forgotten, don’t understand, or are simply indifferent.

Why we should care

Beyond the obvious threat of obliteration posed by nuclear weapons, they also undermine essential international co-operation between states and become a liability in certain situations. For example, in the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, many media sources were keen to point out that any Western military intervention would put nuclear armed states up against each other. It could be argued that the diplomatic actions taken towards the crisis, resulting in economic sanctions and a recent shift of the G8 meeting away from Sochi, can be partly attributed to the looming presence of nuclear arsenals. As such, the continued presence of these weapons will continue to affect the cooperation and relationship between Russia and the West, for better or for worse.

Nuclear weapons, or efforts taken to prevent their proliferation, can also affect a range of industries and economies. The threat of nuclear proliferation in Iran led to the implementation of economic sanctions that affected trade in a range of countries (including the UK, US and other European states) and a range of industries such as banking, insurance, oil, pharmaceuticals, and food. UN Resolution 1540 also calls upon states to implement export controls and regulations on materials that could be used for WMD proliferation, which affects such industries as shipping and transport, and manufacturing firms.

It is naïve to assume that any spending on nuclear weapons or related programmes would or could be simply or entirely allocated to spending in other areas, such as healthcare or other threat reduction initiatives, but the stark contrast in the spending is noteworthy: In 2002, the World Bank estimated that $40-60 billion USD annually would be enough to meet the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals, which range from providing universal primary education to eradicating poverty and hunger. Between FY2008 – FY2013, the US spent $77 billion to address global climate change in total, with the President’s request for $11.6 billion for FY2014. At the same time, it was estimated in 2012 that the US was on track to spend an average of $64 billion per year on nuclear weapons and related programmes over the following decade.

Continued reliance on nuclear deterrence is a divisive issue. Whether one believes that it brings security and stability, or that the risks (and monetary costs) are too high, reliance on nuclear weapons for security is among the most pressing issues of our time and we need to be aware that the decisions we make today will have implications on the future and the uncertain threats that we will face. With public interest in nuclear issues waning, policy shapers and the emerging leaders of tomorrow are increasingly focusing their attention elsewhere. As a result, nuclear policy is being pushed back to those who have been making these decisions for decades and the circular debate rooted in Cold War perspectives continues. Fresh perspectives and a renewed interest in the nuclear debate are needed to address these security challenges of the future.

The way forward

Now is the time to engage the next generation on these issues if we are ever going to find a long term solution to this long term problem. The debate on nuclear weapons needs new ideas and help to shift nuclear weapons out of their isolated silo and back to the heart of security debate. This requires building a security narrative that includes nuclear weapons in a broader context, approaching them as a part of a bigger problem, and not as the problem itself. This also involves bringing in a wider range of disciplines into the nuclear weapons debate including businesses, creative communities, environmental and health groups, and social scientists, because nuclear weapons have an effect on all of us.

If we are going to make progress on the nuclear weapons debate, we need continued engagement from all sides, along with a deeper understanding of the motivations behind what drives people to think about (or not think about) nuclear weapons. In essence, we need to reconnect with the nuclear debate and start thinking about a sustainable future.

BASIC has launched a new Next Generation project to inspire a next generation of thinking on nuclear weapons.

Rachel Staley is currently the Programme Manager for the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) in their London office. Since 2011, Rachel has managed the operations of the office and assisted in developing the organisation’s programmes working on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament in the Middle East, as well as engaging directly in the Trident renewal debate in the United Kingdom. Rachel holds an MA with Distinction in Non-Proliferation and International Security from King’s College London and a BA with Honours in International Affairs and Anthropology from Northeastern University.