External Policy: Brief Hope of Interdependence

Abstract

The purpose of all these committees and people and departments involved in the cumbersome machinery of atomic government was to evolve policy and to execute it. There were two main areas of policy — external relations with other countries which are the province of this chapter and Chapters 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10, and internal production policy, the province of Chapters 6 and 7. The two areas are interconnected: production policy influenced, and was influenced by, external relations. But interconnection did not mean interdependence. British production policy was primarily determined neither by international negotiations for the control of atomic energy, nor by the success or failure of negotiations for co-operation with the United States of America or any other countries. British production policy was largely the instinctive response of a country which had been a great world power and believed itself to be one still, and which had the knowledge and industrial resources to develop what was manifestly the new passport to first-class military, and possibly industrial, rank. Nevertheless, the external questions were of very great concern to Britain. She experienced the same mixture of feelings as other countries about international control — first great hopes, then fears mixed with reluctance.