Anglo-American Nuclear Weapons Cooperation After the Nassau Conference

The British Policy of Interdependence

Bibliographic Data

ID12747773
AuthorsMichael Middeke (London School of Economics and Political Science, corresponding author)
Year2000
Volume2
Issue2
Pages69-96
Publication date2000-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Cold War Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1520-3972 • E-ISSN: 1531-3298
PublisherThe MIT Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1162/15203970051032318
OpenAlexW2006612410
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited11

The Anglo-American summit at Nassau in December 1962 did not strictly separate Britain's deterrent from the proposed Multilateral Force (MLF). As a result, Conservative governments in the 1960s tried to safeguard maximum British independence in nuclear relations with the United States. The British tried to thwart American initiatives on the mixed-manned MLF; some British officials even hoped to preserve an “independent British deterrent” through nuclear cooperation with France. For the United States, the British deterrent had political value in an intra-alliance or East-West context, but no military or political significance in itself. The MLF idea of bilateral nuclear cooperation with Britain and France was a means to contain French and German nuclear ambitions and to settle Cold War disputes with the Soviet Union. In London, however, leading officials believed that Britain's future as a great power was inextricably linked to the possession of an independent nuclear deterrent. When nuclear independence was lost, the appearance of independence became more important

Alliance · Context (archaeology · Economic history · Independence (probability theory · Nuclear weapon · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Possession (linguistics · Sociology · History · Law · Nuclear Issues and Defense · Space exploration and regulation · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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