UK Nuclear Interests: Security, Resilience and Trident

Abstract

Over the last eight years, discussions about the UK’s national interest have set the goal of building a ‘resilient nation’ (Omand 2005). The idea of ‘resilience’ has, or seems to have, superseded ‘security’ as a primary way of defining the UK’s national interest. Resilience was thus at the heart of the Conservative Party platform in 2010 (‘A Resilient Nation’) and remained at the core of the two key strategic documents published in 2010: the National Security Strategy (Cabinet Office 2010a) and the Strategic Defence and Security Review (Cabinet Office 2010b). In each, resilience appears as one of the two overarching goals that the UK has set as its national interest. In their foreword to the National Security Strategy, David Cameron and Nick Clegg thus state: ‘at home, we must become more resilient both to external threats and to natural disasters’ (Cabinet Office 2010a, p. 4).