British Nuclear Weapons and the Test Ban: Squaring the Circle of Defence and Arms Control, 1974–82 by John Walker (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by:

• British Nuclear Weapons and the Test Ban: Squaring the Circle of Defence and Arms Control, 1974–82 by John Walker
• Christoph Laucht (bio)

British Nuclear Weapons and the Test Ban: Squaring the Circle of Defence and Arms Control, 1974–82
By John Walker. Abingdon: Routledge, 2023. Pp. 174.

John Walker’s latest book marks an important study of the complex relationship between nuclear weapons technology, arms control, and questions of nuclear (non)proliferation. It examines British intentions, motivations, aims, and objectives in the negotiations between the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States over a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) from 1974 to 1982. While Lorna Arnold, Richard Moore, Toshihiro Higuchi, and Walker himself in his earlier work have largely focused on the test ban debate of the 1950s leading up to the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, British Nuclear Weapons and the Test Ban sheds light on a thus far neglected aspect of nuclear arms control, or what Walker also refers to as “the Holy Grail of arms control since the 1950s” (p. 1). The author pays particular attention to the likely impacts of a CTBT on the reliability and safety of the United Kingdom’s nuclear arsenal.

Apart from an introduction (ch. 1) and conclusion (ch. 6), British Nuclear Weapons and the Test Ban contains four main chapters. For heuristic purposes, the main body opens with an overview of the CTBT negotiations that took place in Geneva between 1977 and 1982 (ch. 2). During the talks, the Callaghan and Thatcher governments faced a fundamental dilemma: on the one hand, they aspired to a CTBT as an international measure to reduce nuclear stockpiles. On the other, they worried that a test ban might obstruct designing new warheads and jeopardize the reliability and safety of the existing British stockpile. Walker reminds us that this quandary resembled the situation that the Macmillan government encountered between 1954 [End Page 1061] and 1958 when the United Kingdom sought to complete its thermonuclear weapons program ahead of a moratorium on testing coming into effect. At the same time, practical issues around verification of a CTBT through National Seismic Stations added complexity to the negotiations.

The three chapters that follow focus more specifically on key themes concerning British interests in the talks. From 1974, it became apparent that the United Kingdom required continued nuclear testing on the Nevada Test Site in the United States to proceed with the development of hardened warheads for the Chevaline upgrade of the Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs; ch. 3). Simultaneously, testing was needed to ensure the safety and reliability of the United Kingdom’s stockpile (ch. 4). As Walker shows, British dependence on the United States—both technologically and in terms of a test site—caused the British government headaches. An emerging rift over the duration of a CTBT between the Carter administration and Callaghan government accentuated this further.

Alongside these issues, the British government worried over the potential impacts that a CTBT might have on the development of nuclear warheads for strategic systems—Chevaline and its replacement, Trident SLBMs—and tactical nuclear weapons, especially the WE 177 free-fall nuclear bomb (ch. 5). Despite nuclear testing in 1978 and 1979 that had confirmed the viability of a new warhead design for the Trident SLBM system even prior to the Thatcher government’s decision in 1980 to procure that system, the British government worried that a CTBT would cease all further British nuclear warhead development. By 1982, these concerns were temporarily allayed when the Reagan administration abandoned the talks. It took then a mere decade before the Clinton administration expressed renewed interest in a CTBT and an agreement was reached in November 1996 (postscript).

In writing British Nuclear Weapons and the Test Ban, Walker benefited from his past experience as member (1985–2020) and director (2014–20) of the United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth’s Office Arms Control and Disarmament Research Unit, as well as his expertise as a historian of nuclear arms control. This shines through in his meticulous analysis of a vast volume of predominantly British government documents. The inclusion of a list of all British nuclear tests that were conducted...