Tag: Nuclear

British officials have privately regarded Israel as a nuclear-armed power for at least 40 years, while telling the public they cannot make an assessment. Israel has never formally declared it has a nuclear weapons programme, a position UK ministers do not publicly contradict. But behind the scenes in Whitehall, staff in the Foreign Office and […]

The war in Ukraine has provoked concern about the use of nuclear weapons, heightened by Russia’s plan to base tactical nuclear arms in Belarus. While the US and Russia have made no secret of their development of these dangerous, indeed potentially devastating, additions to traditional nuclear arsenals, British military planners have also been in on […]

Vladimir Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons if losing the war in Ukraine parallels NATO’s policy of “flexible response” that dates back to 1968, which similarly included a willingness to use nuclear weapons if losing a conventional war. That policy is not widely understood, yet was and remains a part of US and NATO nuclear […]

The UK used its bases in Cyprus, which it retained after the island achieved independence in 1960, as key NATO assets despite Cyprus’s declared non-alignment between East and West, it can be revealed.  NATO was established in 1949 ostensibly as a “defensive” Western military alliance against the “threat” posed by the Soviet Union. Greece and […]

We are in the midst of an extraordinary, indeed perverse, new round of austerity cuts. The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, is reported to be looking for £35 billion across government in cuts. While vital services will continue to be deprived of urgently-needed resources, the government seems set to give the military a budget rise in cash […]

As the UK faces another round of austerity to schools and hospitals from the new chancellor Jeremy Hunt, amid a growing cost of living crisis, tens of billions of pounds of public money are being wasted on unusable and extravagant weapons systems, irrelevant to modern conflict. The government wants to award the armed forces close […]

To consider Scotland’s possible interest in Nato membership in light of the current crisis in Ukraine, we should look at some significant milestones in post-cold war history.  When the cold war was over, Soviet and Russian leaders from Mikhail Gorbachev to Vladimir Putin proposed a new Euro-Atlantic security alliance —“from Dublin to Vladivostok”.  But then […]

The US Air Force (USAF) has 9,730 personnel permanently deployed throughout Britain, an increase of 22% from six years ago.  Analysis by Declassified has found that Britain hosts the third highest level of USAF personnel of any country in the world, ahead of historic US military outposts like South Korea and Italy. These American airmen […]

Nuclear arms have always been seen as useable weapons for fighting ‘limited’ nuclear wars by Nato as a whole, and by the UK and France, and Russia’s nuclear plans are likely to be similar.

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has placed his nuclear forces on high alert and threatened Nato with “consequences they have never seen” if the West tries to stop his illegal invasion of Ukraine. The terrifying threat turned ‘nuclear war’ into one of the most googled terms on Monday morning and prompted rare reflection in the national […]

Records show 97,430 stable iodine tablets were pre-issued to people in Plymouth, Portland and Barrow-in-Furness from 2016-21 to protect them from radiation. Medicine went to nurseries, schools, care homes and clinics near naval docks. The figures are revealed in freedom of information responses from Plymouth, Dorset and Cumbria councils to Declassified UK. Reacting to our […]

The revelation is contained in a new file released to the National Archives. Marked “Top Secret Atomic”, it shows that the presence of the nuclear weapons caused panic among officials in London when they realised the damage, both physical and political, they could have caused.  The military regime in Argentina claimed the Falkland islands and […]

Australia’s independence from Britain has been contested ground since the nation’s birth in 1901 – the first real test being Australia’s decision to send troops to Europe for Britain’s war with Germany in 1914.  Two bitterly fought referenda to allow military conscription were narrowly defeated – Australia’s contribution to the Great War was to remain […]

Boris Johnson’s government has announced an increase in the UK’s arsenal of nuclear arms and now threatens to use it against non-nuclear-weapon states. These policies are illegal and are likely to increase global tensions.

With pro-independence parties poised to secure a significant majority at the Scottish parliament elections, Declassified explores how Scotland could soon forge a radically different foreign policy from the rest of the UK. We asked Scottish politicians, campaigners and thinkers for their views on nuclear weapons, Russia, China, the arms trade and human rights.

New analysis shows that Britain plans to spend hundreds of billions of pounds on expensive military projects while the UK’s under-funded public health system struggles to address pandemics such as Covid-19.