Britain and France as Nuclear Partners

Abstract

In November 2010, as part of a broad-ranging bilateral defence agreement, the United Kingdom and France signed a treaty providing for limited cooperation on nuclear weapons. Modest in scope, and the product in immediate terms of economic pressure, the nuclear treaty's main substantive provision is for the joint construction of radiographic-hydrodynamic facilities. 1 Beneath the surface of this treaty, however, lies a story of significant strategic shifts, and there are intriguing possibilities for future collaboration between the UK and France, and perhaps for trilateral cooperation involving the United States.The potential for UK-French collaboration spans the spectrum of nuclearweapons issues, from technology to policy, and perhaps to operational matters. These possibilities are sensitive, not only because they run into the everyday difficulties of political-military relations between the countries, but also for their relevance to two current debates: the ongoing battle over renewing the UK's fleet of strategic nuclear submarines, and international demands for multilateral nuclear disarmament.The impulse towards a nuclear partnership is not new: it existed to varying degrees over the course of the Cold War, most strongly at certain moments in the 1960s and 1970s; and in the 1990s the first steps were taken, at least towards consultation. However, for a number of strategic, political and technical reasons, no significant progress in this direction was made. By 2010, three things had changed.

Revisiting France's nuclear exception after its ‘return’ to NATO

“…Closer bilateral cooperation with the British has proven an economically and strategically attractive option, an option made politically palatable when France returned to NATO's integrated military command structure. 16 Budgetary constraints could thus serve as an additional incentive for French participation in NATO's nuclear mission. 17…”

Franco-British Defence and Security Cooperation after Brexit: An Exception in Europe

“…But before 2010, the two countries did not have a joint nuclear policy and the USA has remained Britain's closer ally in this area. 26 In the 2010 SDSR, the government renewed its commitment to maintaining a nucleararmed missile submarine on patrol at all times (Continuous-At-Sea-Deterrence, CASD) but the number of nuclear warheads was reduced and the decision to replace them was delayed. 27 The Lancaster House Treaty on nuclear weapons cooperation was thus a milestone in French and British military history, especially as France long saw the nuclear domain as too sensitive for cooperation.…”

European nuclear nationalism: UK and French perspectives on nuclear disarmament

“…Since the Ottawa declaration of 1974, 1 the two nations, both founding members of NATO, have argued that their nuclear forces contribute to the deterrent capacity of the Alliance (North Atlantic Council 1974: para 6;NATO 2010: para 18). In 2010, the two countries signed a fifty-year treaty to develop and operate joint nuclear warhead diagnostic facilities in the UK and France, which cemented a nuclear-armed path dependency for both nations for the foreseeable future (Harries 2012). Beyond these commonalities, France and the UK have had different approaches to the possibility of nuclear disarmament; these derive from the different post-Second World War national narratives in which the development of nuclear weapons has been embedded.…”