By George Bizetas
This trilogy of books sheds fresh light on developments in British nuclear weapons policy and arsenal between 1964 and 1983.
Kristan Stoddart: Losing an Empire and Finding a Role: Britain, the USA, NATO, and Nuclear Weapons, 1964–1970. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
This illuminating book is a prime example of the sort of study that is now possible on the Western side. Stoddart draws skillfully on newly declassified British documents to tell the story of nuclear policymaking in Great Britain during the crucial six-year administration of Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his Labour Party.
Although Stoddart emphasizes that the British government has withheld a good deal of material on grounds of protecting national security, he manages to assemble a deeply detailed study that convincingly carries forward a line of research initiated by Richard Moore’s book, Nuclear Illusion, Nuclear Reality: Britain, the United States and Nuclear Weapons, which examines British policymaking under the Conservative Party in the first years after Britain acquired nuclear weapons.
Kristan Stoddart: The Sword and the Shield Britain, America, NATO and Nuclear Weapons, 1970-1976, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
The Sword and the Shield reveals for the first time declassified discussions that took place between the British, French and US governments for nuclear cooperation in the early to mid-1970s. In doing so, it sets the scene for the top secret upgrade to Britain’s Polaris force, codenamed Chevaline, and how this could have brought down Harold Wilson’s Labour government of 1974-1976. It also analyses the evolution of NATO strategy in this period into something that was capable of a flexible response to Warsaw Pact aggression–a response that, if enacted, could well have been apocalyptic.
Kristan Stoddart: Facing Down the Soviet Union, Britain, the USA, NATO and Nuclear Weapons, 1976-1983, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Facing Down the Soviet Union reveals for the first time the historic deliberations regarding the Chevaline upgrade to Britain’s Polaris force, the decisions to procure the Trident C-4 and then D-5 system from the Americans in 1980 and 1982. It also details the decision to base Ground Launched Cruise Missiles in the UK in 1983.
