Britain and the H-bomb, 1955–1958

Abstract

Britain's decision in 1955, reaffirmed by policy and action through 1958, to manufacture its own hydrogen bomb has raised important questions about the effectiveness of joint Anglo-American defense arrangements. That the British development of massive retaliatory weapons involved a costly and unnecessary duplication of the American program has been persuasively argued by Henry Kissinger. Like many others, Kissinger would have preferred Britain to have concentrated on the conventional and tactical nuclear means of waging limited war. Indeed, from a joint Anglo-American point of view, Kissinger's argument is so persuasive that an altogether different point of view, much more exclusively national, is required to explain Britain's H-bomb development. This may be discerned in the way in which the policy was presented to the British public. Granting that such presentation does not necessarily reveal the actual motivations of policy-makers, nevertheless the public justifications for Britain's H-bomb illuminate the image which Englishmen have of their nation's status in world affairs, particularly in relation to the United States.