Abstract
If the Special Relationship existed anywhere, it was in the sphere of defence.1 For John Dumbrell, nuclear co-operation (along with signals intelligence sharing under the UKUSA agreement) ‘formed the essence and beating heart of the Cold War “special relationship”’, allowing Britain to act as a great power by proxy.2 Yet, in addition to Cuba and British Guiana, the proposal by the US to create a multilateral nuclear force (MLF) strained Anglo-American relations under Douglas-Home. Originally conceived during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–61), the MLF was intended to facilitate shared control of nuclear weapons between NATO members.3 However, it did not gain momentum until a series of events in 1962, beginning with the cancellation in November of that year of the Skybolt air-launched ballistic missile system, which had been earmarked as the delivery mechanism for the American nuclear deterrent. Skybolt had been promised to Britain by the Eisenhower administration, and its abandonment therefore precipitated a major diplomatic incident. After much discussion, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan successfully negotiated a favourable deal for the Polaris submarine-launched system as a replacement. The quid pro quo, enshrined in the resulting Nassau Agreement, was British acceptance of the MLF and agreement to allocate her newly acquired submarines to the force as part of NATO.
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Notes
J. Baylis, Anglo-American Defence Relations 1939–1984: The Special Relationship, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1984), p. 208.
J. Dumbrell, A Special Relationship: Anglo-American Relations in the Cold War and After (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2001), p. 124.
L. S. Kaplan, ‘The US and NATO in the Johnson Years’, in R. A. Divine (ed.), Exploring the Johnson Years, Vol. III: LBJ at Home and Abroad (Lawrence, Kan.: The University of Kansas Press, 1994), p. 121.
A. J. Pierre, Nuclear Politics: The British Experience with an Independent Strategic Force, 1939–1970 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 243.
Pierre, Nuclear Politics, p. 251. See also A. Buchan, The Multilateral Force: An Historical Perspective (London: Institute for Strategic Studies, 1964).
J. L. Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War, revised edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 222.
J. W. Young, ‘International Factors and the 1964 Election’, Contemporary British History, 21 (2007), 355
F. Costigliola, ‘LBJ, Germany, and “the end of the Cold War”’, in W. I. Cohen and N. B. Tucker (eds), Lyndon Johnson Confronts the World: American Foreign Policy, 1963–1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 182.
G. W. Ball, The Past Has Another Pattern: Memoirs (London: Norton, 1982), pp. 98–108.
Baylis, Defence Relations, p. 138. See also H. Wilson, The Labour Government, 1964–1970: A Personal Record (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971), p. 73.
S. Dockrill, Britain’s Retreat from East of Suez: The Choice between Europe and the World? 1945–1968 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 30.
Quoted in M. D. Kandiah and G. Staerck, ‘“Reliable Allies”: Anglo-American Relations’, in W. Kaiser and G. Staerck eds), British Foreign Policy, 1955–64: Contracting Options (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), p. 140.
Record of conversation, 21 March 1963, PREM 11/4995, TNA; M. Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement 1945–1963 (Chichester: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 380–1.
L. Freedman, Britain and Nuclear Weapons (London: Macmillan, 1980), p. 6.
H. Kissinger, The Troubled Partnership: A Reappraisal of the Atlantic Alliance (Westpoint, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985), p. 119.
Baylis, Defence Relations, p. 138; D. Healey, The Time of My Life (London: Michael Joseph, 1989), p. 304.
C. Bluth, Britain, Germany and Western Nuclear Strategy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 97.
British Institute of Public Opinion files, quoted in Pierre, Nuclear Politics, p. 257; D. E. Butler and A. King, The British General Election of 1964 (London: Macmillan, 1965), p. 128.
London to State, 1700, 12 October 1964, Multilateral Force—Cables, Vol. II, Box 24, NSF Subject File, NLLBJ; F. W. S. Craig (ed.), British General Election Manifestos, 1918–66 (Chichester: Political Reference Publications, 1970), pp. 213–17.
R. G. Hughes, Britain, Germany and the Cold War: The Search for a European Détente 1949–1967 (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 128.
J. J. Widén and J. Colman, ‘Lyndon B. Johnson, Alec Douglas-Home, Europe and the NATO Multilateral Force, 1963–64’, Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 5 (2007), 194.
A. M. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), p. 875.
Quoted in R. J. Granieri, The Ambivalent Alliance: Konrad Adenauer, the CDU/CSU, and the West, 1949–1966 (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2002), p. 204.
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© 2014 Andrew Holt
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Holt, A. (2014). NATO and the Multilateral Nuclear Force. In: The Foreign Policy of the Douglas-Home Government. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137284419_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137284419_3
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