The orthodoxy still says that every self-respecting great power must have its nuclear weapons on permanent alert, in order to deter a surprise attack by some other nuclear power. Nuclear "Pearl Harbours" allegedly lie in wait around every corner.
But, as Harvey told The Guardian newspaper: "If you can just break yourself out of that frankly almost lunatic mindset for a second, all sorts of alternatives start to look possible, indeed credible."
What drove Harvey into this bold assertion was the fact that Britain can no longer afford its nuclear deterrent. It will have to replace its current fleet of four Trident II ballistic-missile submarines by 2028, and the estimated cost is US$20 billion ($24.27 billion) to US$30 billion. That's less than two weeks' worth of American military spending, but for Britain it would mean cutting deeply into every other area of the defence budget.
The British Army was "driving around in vehicles which are literally about to fall to pieces", he said. The navy needs a new fleet of frigates and the air force is committed to buying the joint strike fighter. They can't have it all and some senior officers are asking: "Is the cost of having a new generation of nuclear weapons too high in terms of what it would prevent us doing on other fronts."
So what are the alternatives to eternal hair-trigger readiness for an attack nobody really expects to come? You could just get rid of all your nuclear weapons, of course, and you'd probably be just as safe as you are now. But if you can't get your head around the idea of nuclear nakedness, you could at least store your magical cloak in the closet, safely out of the reach of foolish children.
What Harvey was actually proposing was that Britain should get rid of its missile-firing submarines when they get too old, and rely on a few cruise missiles with nuclear warheads to keep everybody else honest. Store them somewhere safe, and don't even take them out unless the international situation got dramatically worse.
In fact, why not do that right now? Those "boomers" - nuclear-powered submarines carrying long-range ballistic missiles with multiple nuclear warheads - were really designed for "retaliation from the grave" if all the owner's cities, military bases, ports and hamburger stands were destroyed in an enormous surprise nuclear attack. Does anybody expect such a thing in the current era? And the best thing about putting the nukes in the cupboard is that you eliminate the risk of ugly accidents. In 2009, two boomers, one British and the other French, actually collided underwater. Even at a time unprecedented in world history, when no great power fears attack by any other, it would have been a frightening event if those two submarines had been American and Chinese.
So put the toys away, boys. Don't expect the Israelis, the Indians and the Pakistanis to follow suit, because they live in parts of the world where full-scale war with a powerful enemy is still a possibility. But they have only about 500 nuclear weapons; the five nuclear-armed great powers have about 11,000.
Somebody has to start, and Britain is the likeliest candidate of the five. Harvey lost his job in the Cabinet reshuffle, but the "nuclear capability review" is still under way.
Even Britain's generals think that another generation of fully-deployed missile-firing submarines would deprive them of most of the other new weapons they want, so the issue will stay on the table. Dumping the boomers and locking the remaining nuclear warheads in the cupboard would be a useful halfway house on the way to getting rid of them entirely.
Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist.
