The virtual seminar will be held from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. (E.T.)
Following the Scottish National Party’s win in the Scottish parliamentary election on 6 May, a second referendum on Scotland’s independence is now possible, opening up the question of the future of the United Kingdom and of its nuclear standing, role and capabilities. Britain’s only nuclear weapons system comprises four SSBNs, bearing US-supplied Trident missiles, operated out of Faslane and Coulport in Scotland. The Scottish National Party has long been committed to removal of the nuclear force from its territory when independence has been gained. In this seminar, Chalmers and William Walker will revisit some of the issues they raised in their co-authored 2001 book “Uncharted Waters: The UK, Nuclear Weapons and the Scottish Question,” as well as in subsequent studies during the 2014 referendum campaign. The talk will address the politics of nuclear weapons in the Scottish/UK context, the role of UK nuclear weapons and their dependence on Scottish bases, the impact of Scotland’s independence on UK nuclear weapons, and for NATO and Europe, and the influence of and implications for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Although the parallels with the Soviet Union’s break-up are not close, the UK’s break-up – if it happens - could also be momentous for international nuclear relations, albeit for different reasons.
About the speakers:
Malcolm Chalmers is Deputy Director-General of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London and directs its growing portfolio of research into contemporary defence and security issues. His own work is focused on UK defence, foreign and security policy. His most recent papers have been on the outcome of the UK’s 2021 Integrated Review, national interest and UK foreign policy, tensions between different rules-based international systems, UK defence budgeting, and the security implications of Brexit. Chalmers has been an Adviser to Parliament’s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy since 2012 and was Senior Special Adviser to Foreign Secretaries Jack Straw MP and Margaret Beckett MP.
William Walker is Professor Emeritus of International Relations, University of St Andrews, Scotland. Previously, he worked at the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex. He has been a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM). He is the author of “A Perpetual Menace: Nuclear Weapons and International Order” (2012) and of “Nuclear Entrapment: THORP and the Politics of Commitment” (1999), and co-author of “Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996: World Inventories, Capabilities and Policies” (1997) and “The Problem of Weak Nuclear States” (Nonproliferation Review, 2013). More recently, he authored the Princeton SGS working paper “On Nuclear Embeddedness and (Ir)Reversibility” (2020).