Britain and France

The United States stopped nuclear cooperation with Britain at the end of World War II, much to the annoyance of the British government. There was widespread agreement in the country that Britain should have a bomb of its own, and this was reinforced by two specific anxieties. The first was that Britain did not want to repeat the experience of 1939-41 when it had stood virtually alone against Germany; the second was the fear that the United States, which was less vulnerable to attack than Britain, might rashly precipitate war. Britain hoped that the bomb would help it both to deter the Soviet Union and to influence the United States.

Britain tested the atomic bomb in October i952 and the hydrogen bomb in May 1957. In 1958, the United States amended the Atomic Energy Act to permit close cooperation in nuclear weapons research, design, and production with countries that had already made "substantial progress" on their own. Britain achieved what Prime Minister Harold Macmillan called "the great prize," when agreements were signed in i958 to establish the basis for collaboration in

The design and development of nuclear weapons.615 Cooperation extended to the coordination of strike plans and the transfer of US nuclear weapons to Britain in the event of war.

French nuclear policy followed a quite different course. After the war, France focused on the peaceful uses of atomic energy; the decision to build the bomb was taken later and in stages. In 1952, the government decided to build two reactors suited to plutonium production; in December 1954, the government decided that France should build the bomb; two years later, a secret committee was set up to bring together the scientists and the military chiefs. On April 11, 1958, Prime Minister Felix Gaillard signed the order to make and test the bomb. General Charles de Gaulle reaffirmed this decision when he took power in June of the same year, and in February 1960 the first French bomb was tested in the Sahara.

Several different motives shaped the French decision, but the most important was the insistence on having a voice in decisions affecting France’s survival as a state. This was true of the governments of the Fourth Republic, which were concerned that without nuclear weapons they would have no influence on NATO’s strategic planning. It was even more true ofGeneral de Gaulle, who doubted the credibility ofthe US nuclear guarantee to Western Europe. He proposed in September 1958 that a triumvirate consisting of the United States, Britain, and France be formed in NATO with the power to take joint decisions on questions affecting global security and to draw up joint strategic plans. This was so important to France, he said, that it would withdraw from NATO’s military organization if his proposal were not adopted.616 Eisenhower was willing to promise regular consultations, but that did not satisfy de Gaulle.