The Area of Interdependence: Uranium

Abstract

Throughout all discussions of external policy, uranium supplies have been a dominant theme. Proposals for international ownership of uranium featured prominently in the unsuccessful plans for international control of atomic energy. Anglo-American collaboration in uranium survived as the one area where the two countries continued to co-operate throughout our period. Britain’s concessions on uranium allocations and her possible influence with producing countries seemed the only bait to tempt the Americans to technical exchanges; even so, they consumed the bait while avoiding the hook. Britain’s own programme was influenced — though beneficially — when she forwent a third atomic pile to ensure uranium supplies for the United States. In the formulation of policy towards Europe and the Commonwealth, uranium was the criterion which divided the sheep from the goats; irrespective of any wider political considerations, countries were treated more or less favourably according to whether or not nature had endowed them with uranium-bearing rocks.