Focusing on a key twenty year period, this study explores Britain's role in efforts to bring about a nuclear test ban treaty between 1954 and 1973. Taking a broadly chronological approach, it examines the nature of defence planning, Anglo-American relationships, the efficacy of British diplomacy and UK contributions to arms control and disarmament. The appraisal of the relationship between the requirements and developments of the UK nuclear weapons programme against the countervailing international and domestic pressures for a test ban treaty will be of interest to anyone studying post-war British defence and foreign policy, history of science, arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation and international relations, or who is looking for background information on current events involving nuclear proliferation and disarmament.

In 1962 Dean Acheson famously described Britain as having lost an Empire but not yet found a role. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in the realms of nuclear weapons. An increasingly marginal world power, successive post-war British governments felt that an independent nuclear deterrent was essential if the country was to remain at the top table of world diplomacy. Focusing on a key twenty-year period, this study explores Britain's role in efforts to bring about a nuclear test ban treaty between 1954 and 1973. Taking a broadly chronological approach, it examines the nature of defence planning, the scientific goals that nuclear tests were designed to secure, Anglo-American relationships, the efficacy of British diplomacy and its contribution to arms control and disarmament. A key theme of the study is to show how the UK managed to balance the conflicting pressures created by its determination to remain a credible nuclear power whilst wanting to pursue disarmament objectives, and how these pressures shifted over the period in question. Based on a wealth of primary sources this book opens up the largely ignored subject of the impact of arms control on the UK nuclear weapons programme. Its appraisal of the relationship between the requirements and developments of the UK nuclear weapons programme against international and domestic pressures for a test ban treaty will be of interest to anyone studying post-war British defence and foreign policy, history of science, arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation and international relations. It also provides important background information on current events involving nuclear proliferation and disarmament.

Political Fallout is the story of one of the first human-driven, truly global environmental crises—radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing during the Cold War—and the international response. Beginning in 1945, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union detonated hundreds of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, scattering a massive amount of radioactivity across the globe. The scale of contamination was so vast, and radioactive decay so slow, that the cumulative effect on humans and the environment is still difficult to fully comprehend. The international debate over nuclear fallout turned global radioactive contamination into an environmental issue, eventually leading the nuclear superpowers to sign the landmark Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) in 1963. Bringing together environmental history and Cold War history, Toshihiro Higuchi argues that the PTBT, originally proposed as an arms control measure, transformed into a dual-purpose initiative to check the nuclear arms race and radioactive pollution simultaneously. Higuchi draws on sources in English, Russian, and Japanese, considering both the epistemic differences that emerged in different scientific communities in the 1950s and the way that public consciousness around the risks of radioactive fallout influenced policy in turn. Political Fallout addresses the implications of science and policymaking in the Anthropocene—an era in which humans are confronting environmental changes of their own making.

Grappling with the Bomb is a history of Britain’s 1950s program to test the hydrogen bomb, code name Operation Grapple. In 1957–58, nine atmospheric nuclear tests were held at Malden Island and Christmas Island—today, part of the Pacific nation of Kiribati. Nearly 14,000 troops travelled to the central Pacific for the UK nuclear testing program—many are still living with the health and environmental consequences. Based on archival research and interviews with nuclear survivors, Grappling with the Bomb presents i-Kiribati woman Sui Kiritome, British pacifist Harold Steele, businessman James Burns, Fijian sailor Paul Ah Poy, English volunteers Mary and Billie Burgess and many other witnesses to Britain’s nuclear folly.

En studie vedr. kernevåbens betydning og indflydelse på sikkerhedspolitik og magtbalance

Drawing on revealing new research, this richly informative volume is the definitive concise introduction to the crisis that took the world to the brink of nuclear war. Cuban Missile Crisis: The Essential Reference Guide captures the historical context, the minute-by-minute drama, and the profound repercussions of the "Missiles of October" confrontation that brought the very real threat of nuclear attack to the United States' doorstep. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the crisis, it takes full advantage of recently opened Soviet archives as well as interviews with key Russian, Cuban, and U.S. officials to explore the event as it played out in Moscow, Havana, Washington, and other locations around the world. Cuban Missile Crisis contains an introductory essay by the author and alphabetically organized reference entries contributed by leading Cold War researchers. The book also includes an exceptionally comprehensive bibliography. Together, these resources give readers everything they need to understand the escalating tensions that led to the crisis as well as the intense diplomacy that resolved it, including new information about the back-channel negotiations between Robert Kennedy and Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin.

Since the use of poison gas during the First World War and the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan at the end of the Second World War, nuclear, biological or chemical (NBC) weapons have registered high on the fears of governments and individuals alike. Recognising both the particular horror of these weapons, and their potential for inflicting mass death and destruction, much effort has been expended in finding ways to eliminate such weapons on a multi-lateral level. Based on extensive official archives, this book looks at how successive British governments approached the subject of control and disarmament between 1956 and 1975. This period reflects the UK's landmark decision in 1956 to abandon its offensive chemical weapons programme (a decision that was reversed in 1963, but never fully implemented), and ends with the internal travails over the possible use of CR (tear gas) in Northern Ireland. Whilst the issue of nuclear arms control has been much debated, the integration of biological and chemical weapons into the wider disarmament picture is much less well understood, there being no clear statement by the UK authorities for much of the period under review in this book as to whether the country even possessed such weapons or had an active research and development programme. Through a thorough exploration of government records the book addresses fundamental questions relating to the history of NBC weapons programmes, including the military, economic and political pressures that influenced policy; the degree to which the UK was a reluctant or enthusiastic player on the international arms control stage; and the effect of international agreements on Britain's weapons programmes. In exploring these issues, the study provides the first attempt to assess UK NBC arms control policy and practice during the Cold War.