Abstract
Britain has many reasons to be concerned about the long-term consequences of the United States Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), not least the stimulus it will doubtless give to Soviet BMD research. Like France, Britain relies on the absence of significant Soviet missile defences to ensure the effectiveness (and with it the credibility) of its relatively small deterrent force. If such defences become a permanent feature of the strategic landscape, then Britain will clearly have to reconsider its options for staying in the nuclear business.
A shortened version of this paper appeared in Defense Analysis 1 (June 1985).
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Notes
Lawrence Freedman, ‘The Small Nuclear Powers’, in Ashton B. Carter and David N. Schwartz (eds), Ballistic Missile Defense (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1984) p. 258.
For details of current and expected Soviet BMD deployments see Thomas K. Longstreth, John E. Pike and John B. Rhinelander, The Impact of US and Soviet Ballistic Missile Reference Programs on the ABM Treaty, A Report for the National Campaign to Save the ABM Treaty (March 1985) pp. 19–22; see also chapters 12, 15 and 16 in this volume.
See David Hobbs, Alternatives to Trident, Aberdeen Studies in Defence Economics 25 (Summer 1983) for a comprehensive review of alternative strategic platforms.
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© 1987 Hans Günter Brauch
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Stares, P.B. (1987). The Implications of BMD for Britain’s Nuclear Deterrent. In: Brauch, H.G. (eds) Star Wars and European Defence. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08615-3_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08615-3_11
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