I

Though a crucial watershed for Anglo-American nuclear consultation was reached with the December 1950 meeting between Attlee and Truman, it is necessary to trace how the issue had emerged from the kernel of the wartime alliance. Agreements on nuclear collaboration that Winston Churchill cajoled out of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943–4 formed the essential sub-text for later British arguments for inclusion in decisions concerning the bomb's use. So far as London was concerned, development of the atomic bomb was a shared enterprise, where scientific and technical expertise should be pooled. As confirmed in Margaret Gowing's official history, the story of Anglo-American nuclear relations during the Second World War was, nevertheless, by no means smooth and happy. After early tensions, however, Churchill managed to institutionalize co-operation under the Quebec Agreement of August 1943, where Roosevelt consented to the formation of a Combined Policy Committee in Washington to oversee a full exchange of information and ideas. The second article of the agreement also introduced the principle of joint consultation in affirming that the bomb would not be ‘used against third parties without each other's consent’, an understanding explicitly phrased to be of indefinite duration.Footnote ⁸ Just over a year later, in September 1944, Churchill and Roosevelt reached a further understanding at Hyde Park, in upstate New York, where it was avowed that ‘when a “bomb” is finally available, it might perhaps, after mature consideration, be used against the Japanese, who should be warned that this bombardment will be repeated until they surrender’. The so-called ‘Hyde Park Agreement’ also provided for ‘full collaboration’ between the United States and Great Britain in developing atomic energy for military and commercial purposes after the war.Footnote ⁹ The status of these two agreements remained, however, somewhat ambiguous, not least on account of Roosevelt's notoriously chaotic bureaucratic methods, which ensured that authoritative versions were never disseminated throughout the American administration.Footnote ¹⁰

In the build-up to use of the atomic bomb against Japan, there was virtually no debate on the British side of the merits or otherwise of this course of action, with Churchill quickly signalling agreement when informed of American plans. Following discussion between Stimson and Wilson, in early July 1945 British assent to the bomb's use was duly indicated in a minute of the Combined Policy Committee.Footnote ¹¹ Both at the time, and in retrospect, British concurrence seems inevitable: the Americans had contributed the vast bulk of the resources needed in the atomic bomb project and overall strategic direction of the war against Japan had long before been ceded to the US authorities. It would, moreover, be largely American lives that were lost in any invasion of the Japanese home islands, which the use of the bomb was designed to forestall. Indeed, Churchill was anxious that the Americans did not feel that the British were insisting on a legalistic interpretation of the Quebec Agreement's terms when assent to the bomb's use was given, while hoping that ‘the machinery for Anglo-American consultations emerges naturally’.Footnote ¹²

In fact, there was little chance of any such machinery emerging, given the post-war context of American policymaking. Already uneasy that so much knowledge of the atomic bomb programme had been shared, and alarmed by espionage scandals uncovered in the immediate aftermath of the war (many involving atomic matters), congressional lawmakers were determined that their previous exclusion from the realm of nuclear policy should be reversed. In August 1946, congress passed the McMahon Act strictly limiting the nuclear assistance and knowledge that could be offered to other states; from a British perspective, and as Gowing later put it, the legislation seemed ‘a disaster’.Footnote ¹³ That this would jeopardize the precarious Anglo-American nuclear relationship was confirmed in 1947 when senior members of the congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE), the domestic gatekeepers of the US nuclear programme, learned of the Quebec Agreement's provisions. With legislators outraged at the apparent surrender of sole control over the decision to use nuclear weapons that the agreement seemingly represented, and concerns growing over security lapses, the Truman administration was pressured to revisit the issue. Finally, in January 1948, through the so-called modus vivendi, British officials agreed to rescind the ‘consent’ aspects of the 1943 Quebec Agreement, and other areas of nuclear co-operation were placed in cold storage.Footnote ¹⁴

II

It was therefore doubly ironic that just as Britain lost its theoretical right to be a participant in any decision to use the bomb once more, the US Air Force was beginning to deploy combat aircraft to British airbases in anticipation of their future role as the lead wave in any US nuclear offensive against the Soviet Union. With the steady increase in Cold War tensions in Europe in the latter 1940s, marked by landmark events such as instigation of the Berlin blockade in 1948 and formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, US plans for general war with the Soviet Union began to be compiled. Given the marked inferiority of conventional military strength that could be assembled by the Western allies following their rapid demobilization after 1945, the US military authorities envisaged a desperate defence of Western Europe against the Red Army's massed formations, while the US Air Force moved to implement a rapid air counteroffensive against industrial, military, and urban targets within Russia itself. The US stockpile of atomic bombs remained relatively small, meaning a quick ‘knock-out’ attack might not be possible, but it was expected that Soviet war-making capacity would soon be crippled by such an onslaught.Footnote ¹⁵

To carry out these plans, the growing US bomber force, with its still limited range and endurance, required overseas bases to accomplish its missions; this point had been acknowledged as early as the summer of 1946 when US Air Force leaders made arrangements with their opposite numbers in the Royal Air Force for American bomber aircraft to use British airfields under emergency conditions.Footnote ¹⁶ Two years later, during the Berlin airlift, US aircraft began to deploy to the airfields, marking the beginning of a long-term presence, and the US joint chiefs of staff increasingly accorded United Kingdom bases a central role in their war plans.Footnote ¹⁷ Notwithstanding, there were no inter-governmental agreements or understandings which underpinned the possible operations of the US Air Force from British bases, and there had been no discussions between the American and British chiefs of staff concerning the atomic bomb's more general role in war.Footnote ¹⁸

The latter question suddenly assumed much more urgent significance in late 1950, when Chinese intervention in the Korean War raised the possibility that the US might resort to using the atomic bomb to retrieve what had become a desperate military situation for American ground troops on the peninsula. Public speculation became intense immediately following a famously injudicious press conference held by President Truman in late November 1950, in which he revealed that use of the bomb was under consideration, and that decisions on its employment might even be taken by the commander on the ground (in this case, the pugnacious and free-willed General Douglas MacArthur).Footnote ¹⁹ To British observers of events in the Far East, whilst US use of nuclear weapons in a response to a massive Soviet attack in Europe was generally accepted as a last resort measure and necessary deterrent to that unlikely eventuality, the bomb's use in limited conflicts carried huge political consequences and risked expansion of hostilities to a general war, where American airbases in Britain were likely to be targeted by the small, but growing, Soviet atomic arsenal.Footnote ²⁰

It was to convey British concerns over expansion of the war in Korea that Attlee, in a hastily arranged visit, flew to meet Truman in Washington on 5 December 1950, for an encounter discussed by many historians of the post-war Anglo-American relationship.Footnote ²¹ Having ascertained that the US authorities were not actually about to pre-delegate authority over nuclear use to MacArthur or to employ the bomb on the Korean battlefield – except perhaps in the dire emergency of an evacuation from the peninsula – Attlee tried to elicit from Truman a firmer guarantee that London would be consulted should the subject of nuclear use arise. In his state department briefing papers before the meeting with Attlee, however, Truman had been warned that no commitment should be made restricting the United States’ freedom of action concerning the atomic bomb. Instead, it had been recommended, in ambiguous fashion, that American ‘desire and expectation to move in step with the British be stressed (Their role in this matter requires this.)’Footnote ²² Nevertheless, before their fifth meeting on 7 December, Truman had a ‘short private talk’ with Attlee during which he affirmed, according to the British report, that the governments of the United Kingdom and Canada were ‘partners with the United States in this weapon and that the United States Government would not consider its use without consulting the United Kingdom and Canada’. This was described as a ‘personal and oral commitment’ from Truman, and he sidestepped Attlee's invitation to confirm the assurance in writing; as the corresponding American record had the president saying: ‘if a Man's word wasn't any good it wasn't any better writing it down’.Footnote ²³

When news of the conversation was announced by Truman to the rest of the American delegation it was to general consternation, with the US secretary of state, Dean Acheson, particularly adamant that the assurance would have to be withdrawn or modified. The sixth meeting was therefore interrupted by the need to draft a section of the communiqué to be issued after the talks, conveying Truman's ‘hope that world conditions would never call for the use of atomic bomb’ and that he would ‘keep the Prime Minister at all times informed of developments which might bring about a change in the situation’. This anodyne statement was all that the Americans were prepared to concede for public consumption.Footnote ²⁴

One reason for this sudden backtracking was the domestic political situation. The administration was already being assailed by congressional critics for its Far Eastern policies, and senior figures, such as Acheson, were wary about giving more credence to charges that it was prepared to compromise its freedom of manoeuvre for the sake of allied opinion. In the middle of the Attlee talks, moreover, twenty-four Republican senators had sponsored a resolution demanding that the American public be informed about any ‘secret commitments’ that might be made to the British which should also be subject to senate ratification in the manner of a treaty.Footnote ²⁵ On 9 December 1950, the day after Attlee's departure, Acheson was summoned to appear before a closed joint session of the senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where he adhered to the position in the final communiqué and denied, under questioning, that British consent was required before nuclear weapons could be used. When Senator Bourke Hickenlooper asked if the word ‘informed’ in the communiqué meant ‘inform’ as in ‘notify’, or as in ‘consult’, the secretary of state replied that it meant ‘informed’ in the technical sense of the word. Nonetheless, British officials were convinced that Truman's initial private assurance remained: indeed, they recollected that when the new section of the communiqué was drafted at the sixth meeting, Truman had ventured that his previous private undertaking still held good.Footnote ²⁶

Further problems occurred after Attlee returned to Britain, when he informed the House of Commons that he was perfectly satisfied with the assurances received from Truman over the atomic bomb, even claiming that written agreements about consultation were not the way to harmonize policy or build close working relationships with the Americans. Meanwhile, conjecture over what might have been agreed in the talks began to appear in the American press. On 14 December, the Washington Post featured a front-page article alleging that Attlee had extracted a ‘firm arrangement binding the United States not to act alone in using the atom bomb’, causing James E. Webb, the US under-secretary of state, to caution the British ambassador about statements which might have emerged from London sources and reminding him that Acheson would continue to maintain the line presented in the official communiqué.Footnote ²⁷

Difficulties now arose because British and US officials had agreed to exchange records of the Truman–Attlee talks. While the British record of the crucial fifth meeting contained a reference to Truman's personal commitment to consult, this was completely omitted from the American version which simply repeated the language of the communiqué, despite the communiqué having been devised a day later. Anxious exchanges were conducted over whether the Americans should be shown the British record, or even pressed to amend their own version of the meeting.Footnote ²⁸ Concluding that the latter option was both unlikely to succeed and would only irritate the Americans, and in a procedure personally approved by Attlee, it was decided to show the Americans the British record without comment; if they spotted and objected to the point about the atomic bomb then a new copy would be supplied with the offending passage excised.Footnote ²⁹ ‘The point is not that the Americans should actually have to receive the explosive record’, one official noted without irony, ‘but that they should have seen it and be aware of how the matter stands in our archives.’Footnote ³⁰

When the Americans indicated they could not accept a copy of the British record with the original passage, an expurgated version was presented to US officials who were nevertheless told that the record held in London would retain the reference. As Roger Makins, a senior diplomat at the British embassy, reported, the state department now maintained that Truman's private undertaking to consult had been superseded by the communiqué's aspiration to inform. However, there was no direct challenge made by embassy officials to this new position. Makins noted that, ‘after consulting No 10, we have not tried to pin the Americans down in writing since to do so might defeat its own object by causing them to take steps to endeavour to have the undertaking modified’.Footnote ³¹ This was contorted mandarin-reasoning as its best: if the Americans could not be persuaded to commit to a written record of a private assurance, then it is doubtful that the original oral undertaking could have any real value. While an unacknowledged version of Truman's promise languished in a Whitehall file, British officials persisted in believing that they had received a personal undertaking from the president to consult if the US were to consider using the atomic bomb, thereby offering some leverage over US decision-making during a crisis. Yet the evident unwillingness of the Americans to have their hands tied by formal agreements concerning nuclear use provided a strong indication that even had such written assurances existed, their substance was unlikely to carry much weight when the time came for an ultimate presidential decision.

On returning to London in mid-December 1950, Attlee had reported to the cabinet that Truman had no intention of using the bomb in Korea and ‘regards it as joint possession of US, UK and Canada’. There would be ‘fullest consultation before using it, save in retaliation’ and Attlee was ‘fully satisfied’ with the outcome of his visit; the atmosphere in Washington had been good and with their current troubles, ‘they needed our comfort’.Footnote ³² Such soothing reassurances were, however, directly contradicted by evidence that American opinion would not accept anything that resembled a veto being granted to other powers over nuclear use. In March 1951, for example, Senator Brien McMahon, the chairman of the JCAE, wrote to Acheson asking him to state for the committee ‘whether or not any commitment to any other nation might bring about delay in the employment of American atomic weapons beyond the point in time at which, in the absence of the commitment, the President would cause this use’. Acheson's response was to reiterate that no such commitment existed.Footnote ³³ To the British, this kind of double-talk illustrated the weakness of the executive branch before congress and public opinion. Writing to Makins, one official was induced to complain of what he called the ‘schizophrenia’ apparent in American policy:

One still-important British political figure who was profoundly unhappy with the state of affairs reached in early 1951 was the leader of the opposition. When he had first learned from Attlee, in a letter sent just before his departure for Washington, that the 1943 Quebec Agreement had effectively been rescinded in 1948, Churchill was aggrieved. Attlee had tried to offer the rationale that

but this was rejected.Footnote ³⁵

In late January 1951, and much to Attlee's discomfort, Churchill raised the subject in the House of Commons, asking whether the 1943 Agreement could be made public. Despite a private meeting between the two, where Attlee tried to deter his intervention, Churchill persisted, and though Attlee had promised to approach the US authorities to ascertain if publication of the 1943 Agreement was possible, Churchill wrote directly to Truman in February 1951 asking that this should now happen. In doing so, Churchill was partly motivated by the expectation that publication would induce a firmer understanding from the Americans on the use of US airbases in Britain, operations from which were still unregulated by any inter-governmental agreement.Footnote ³⁶ In Washington, anxious US and British officials discussed the best line to take with the ex-premier. Engulfed in his own difficulties with congress over the administration's desire to make a formal commitment of ground troops to NATO, Truman refused the request for publication, and, made aware of the wider political dangers involved, Churchill finally agreed to drop the matter.Footnote ³⁷ Nevertheless, the incident had served to remind Attlee that – just as in the United States – the issue of consultation had the capacity to cause domestic political damage, especially with an election campaign approaching, and that a firmer understanding with the Americans was desirable.

III

By early 1951, it had become apparent that the differences that had emerged between Britain and the United States over the recent conduct of the campaign in Korea, and the greater propensity of the Americans to risk all-out war against China, had opened up the fundamental issue of what circumstances merited the atomic bomb's use when faced with a communist threat that was increasingly seen in global terms. Churchill's concerns over Anglo-American consultation were, in fact, shared by the chiefs of staff (COS). The chief of the air staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir John Slessor, for example, complained in January that he found the position ‘quite intolerable’, and deemed it of the ‘utmost urgency’, on military grounds, to settle the problem. Slessor wanted the Americans to agree to an immediate joint study on how the bomb would be used in war, not least to avoid, in an emergency setting, the kind of rushed discussions seen during Attlee's recent visit to Washington. The Foreign Office, however, was not keen for the issue to be broached again so soon.Footnote ³⁸ ‘There was in England (and, he thought, in the Commonwealth)’, Slessor warned the American chiefs of staff, when visiting Washington in mid-January, ‘an increasing unwillingness to tag along behind the United States with no previous consultation as to future policy and sometimes with no advance knowledge of actions or decisions’.Footnote ³⁹

Bruised by the recent experience of Korea, at the end of February, the COS, in consultation with the Foreign Office, set out their views on atomic warfare and the need for adequate advance consultation and planning. They wanted Sir Oliver Franks, the British ambassador in Washington, to suggest to Acheson that a high-level working party be formed to study the problem. The COS argued that the matter was serious since,

It was believed that American planning involved ‘very early action after the incidence of a critical emergency’, generating minimal time for consultation before atomic weapons were used. A particularly dangerous aspect of the situation, they felt, was the volatile nature of American public opinion, and the widely held conviction that the atomic bomb was a ‘panacea’ which could bring about Russia's defeat without a costly and protracted Cold War struggle.

Even were the Americans to attack the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons, the COS saw this as only the start of a prolonged period of warfare, with disastrous results for all concerned. General war therefore had to be ‘the very last resort – the alternative to bloodless retreat … We may therefore have to accept some further loss of ground, some further strategic retreat in the political field, as long as it would not be literally vital to the Western position.’ The COS advised study of the various scenarios of Russian aggression where use of the bomb might arise, to clarify when vital interests were deemed so threatened by Soviet action that the risks of general war should be run. Crucial areas that had to be held against communist attack were considered to be West Germany, Austria, Turkey, and possibly Berlin, while Yugoslavia and Greece were also seen as important, but probably not so vital as to justify recourse to early use of atomic weapons. To carry public opinion in Western Europe, as well as to offer some deterrent to Soviet action, the COS wanted to examine the idea of issuing an ultimatum threatening atomic attack if the Russians resorted to aggression in these critical regions. No areas in the Far East were specified as justifying the consequences of a resort to general war.Footnote ⁴⁰

Attlee and Ernest Bevin, the ailing foreign secretary, were presented with the conclusions of the COS's grim report at a special staff conference held at Downing Street in early March 1951. All NATO countries, with the exception of the US and Canada, Attlee pointedly noted, were in the front line against the Soviet Union, and that, ‘We certainly could not therefore hand over to America the decision to use the atomic weapon or to issue an ultimatum: nor, on the other hand, could we accept the delay in having to resort to discussion with the other North Atlantic Treaty powers.’ It was therefore decided that the Americans would be approached with a copy of the report in the hope this might provoke comment from the US joint chiefs of staff (JCS), which could then become the basis for a more extended exchange of views. Attlee even hoped that a common Anglo-American position could be arrived at in advance on a set of appropriate ‘stop lines’ beyond which a Russian advance might trigger the delivery of an atomic ultimatum (helping to earn the COS report the sobriquet of the ‘stopline’ paper), though when recalled from Washington to discuss the matter, Franks was cautious about how the US administration should be approached.Footnote ⁴¹

Indeed, the arrival of British requests for meetings and discussions of their basic plans and intentions in war were an unwelcome intrusion to the JCS, who retained recent wartime memories of how combined planning with the British had led to concessions over European strategy during 1942–3 that many still considered mistaken. In one meeting between the JCS and state department representatives in January 1951, the question arose of where to draw the line against communist local aggression, prompting a frustrated Admiral Forrest P. Sherman, the chief of naval operations, to protest that

The US Army's chief of staff, General J. Lawton Collins, confirmed that

Clearly the JCS wanted to retain US freedom of action, and for several months in mid-1951, US officials debated how best to handle the outstanding British requests for talks on atomic warfare. In June 1951, the chief of staff of the US Air Force, General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, for example, told senior state department officials that there should be no concessions to the British, since agreement to consult would mean ‘we lose our position’. Vandenberg was ‘afraid that this is an entering wedge on the use of the atomic bomb in any situation. I think it is our only advantage at the present time and we should not qualify it.’ Convinced that the language employed in the Truman–Attlee communiqué was the best that could be offered to the British, H. Freeman Matthews, the US deputy under-secretary of state, agreed that there should be no movement from the ‘general principle that we should not commit ourselves to prior consultation’. When it came to the particular situation of possible use of British bases for atomic operations, however, there existed general US agreement that consultation with London would be required.Footnote ⁴³ In July 1951, after Franks had reminded Acheson how important it was to proceed with the proposed talks on the ‘stopline’ paper, he had also said that he ‘had the feeling that some of the Military in the Pentagon, particularly the Air Force, were anxious to evade as far as possible political limitations on their power to strike’. Acheson could only confirm Franks's supposition, without adding that the state department itself held similar inclinations.Footnote ⁴⁴

By August 1951, there had still been no formal response to the British request, with US officials remaining concerned that they might be backed into a corner resulting in what Bradley, the chairman of the JCS, called ‘some implied agreement or commitment ahead of time’. Affirming that he saw any talks as involving only a general review of the world situation, Acheson was also resolved that ‘we must avoid a commitment and what we want to do is to work toward a situation in which our allies will go along with us and go along promptly’; on the other hand, the United States could not ‘successfully ask them for a blank check. They feel that if a strike takes off from their territory there will be one coming back the other way.’ Acheson pointed out that the British would want to know if the Americans were ‘sober and responsible’. One purpose of any talks, from the American side, could be to discover if the British were even ready to deny use of their bases unless a commitment were made.Footnote ⁴⁵

The deep irritation that American attitudes engendered on the British side was reflected in a signal sent towards the end of August 1951 by the COS to Air Chief Marshal Sir William Elliot, the head of the British Joint Services Mission in Washington. Dismissing recent American arguments that the possibility of security leaks precluded consideration of the ‘stopline’ paper, the COS wanted Elliot to impress on the JCS that they were ‘getting extremely impatient at the endless stonewalling in Washington on this subject’, complaining that if the Americans did not want to discuss the report they ‘should give us a properly considered and intelligent reason and not this sort of nonsense’. The American response to date, the COS argued, had been ‘quite unacceptable’. They found it difficult to believe that the JCS were unwilling to address a ‘matter which may well involve more momentous implications than any other which has ever been submitted for joint discussion between us’. The issue was not one of ‘merely academic discussion’, and there was an urgency about the situation which the Washington authorities evidently did not recognize. Though the subject of atomic warfare might be what the COS called ‘awkward and unpleasant’, this was, they told Elliot, no reason for

The views of the COS reflected their strength of feeling that, more immediately than for the United States, Britain's very survival was at stake in the event that war with the communist powers should escalate to nuclear dimensions. As Churchill had sought to highlight earlier that year, there was also evidently a clear connection to be drawn between the access the United States enjoyed to British airbases from which to prosecute any atomic offensive against the Soviet Union, and increased feelings of vulnerability thereby instilled in British leaders.

In September 1951, the foreign secretary, Herbert Morrison, travelled to Washington for talks with Acheson. The latter had already admitted to Franks that the Americans had ‘not behaved well’ over the ‘stopline’ paper, and Morrison now hoped to secure American agreement to the political–military talks on atomic warfare that the British had first suggested in March.Footnote ⁴⁷ Pressing for an immediate and positive reply over the right of consultation that he could take to London, Morrison pointed out that, at any time, Attlee might be questioned in the House of Commons about this central matter and that the prime minister felt ‘strongly’ about it. Though ready to concede there would be consultation over the specific case of the use of US bases in Britain for military operations, Acheson still firmly rejected a general assurance over nuclear use, explaining that if President Truman was asked if he had made any agreement which ‘prohibited the use of the atomic weapon under any circumstances he had to answer “no”’.Footnote ⁴⁸

The British came away from these exchanges having to resign themselves to a series of more general strategic talks with the Americans, and for which the COS's earlier ‘stopline’ paper could still provide a starting point for discussion. ‘We shall have to accept, for the moment’, Attlee noted, ‘whatever disadvantage lies in having no formal U.S. commitment (except as regards action from U.K. bases), but we should, in practice, seek to turn the politico-military talks into a regular and permanent system of consultation between the two governments, without, of course, making for any assurance or agreement to this effect.’Footnote ⁴⁹ It was precisely the latter development, in fact, that the Americans were determined to avoid. A form of words concocted by Franks to cover the use of British bases by the US Air Force, and stipulating that their use in an emergency would be ‘a matter for joint decision in the light of the circumstances at the time’, was finally accepted by the Truman administration in October 1951. Franks felt that this phrasing would provide sufficient cover for the government during the general election campaign then in train; if the question were asked whether the Americans could use the bases without British consent, it could accurately be answered ‘no’.Footnote ⁵⁰ Regarding consultation over the atomic bomb's use in general, however, the only statement to which the Americans would agree was anodyne repetition of the same kind of vague talk about discussions between governments over the developing world situation that had featured in the communiqué issued after the Attlee–Truman meeting in December 1950.Footnote ⁵¹

By the end of 1951, the Joint Planning Staff sought to summarize for the COS the position reached over consideration of their ‘stopline’ paper. The paper had originally been drafted to allow discussion concerning circumstances under which atomic war might have to be initiated, as well as those which would cause general war where atomic use was assumed to be virtually automatic. The Americans continued to maintain, however, that they could not

The main area of difference between US and UK positions clearly lay over the Far East, where the Americans would regard an attack by Soviet forces on Japan, or on United Nations forces in Korea, as sufficient to warrant a resort to general war, and in all probability the use of nuclear weapons. By contrast, in the revised version of the ‘stopline’ paper that accompanied the Joint Planners’ report, the British emphasis was on limiting any Far Eastern conflict, and preventing it spreading to Europe and becoming a general war. As a result, any ‘local’ use of the bomb in Asia was to be deprecated as it would increase the chances of escalation.Footnote ⁵² In other words, the line to Anglo-American discord over Korea and Indochina in 1953–4 was already being drawn in 1951.

IV

One result of deliberations over consultation in 1951 was to give an additional spur to Britain's own atomic bomb programme. Only by developing its own nuclear capabilities, it was reasoned, would Britain be taken seriously by the Americans as an ally who would need to be consulted on the crucial issues of war and peace. Another result was that, when Churchill returned to the premiership in October 1951, he was determined to resurrect the spirit of wartime collaboration mustered with Roosevelt over the original atomic bomb project. To this end, Churchill travelled to Washington to see Truman in January 1952, ready to offer American policy in the Far East firmer support than had hitherto been considered prudent by most British officials. Truman himself was prepared to extend the same kind of personal (but essentially informal) assurance earlier given to Attlee, but which had then been rescinded, avowing that his ‘own personal feeling [was] that allies should be consulted’ on any decision to use the bomb. Churchill was also given a very general briefing on the US Strategic Air Plan, while the communiqué issued at the end of the visit included the public enunciation of the position (as we have seen, agreed by Franks the previous October for the purposes of the election campaign) that any use by the United States of its bases in Britain would be ‘a matter of joint decision … in the light of the circumstances prevailing at the time’. This loose form of words was sufficient to mollify the US JCS, who had objected to the idea they had to draw up their war plans without explicit and advance guarantees that the bases could be used in whatever way they should determine.

For Churchill, the January 1952 trip to the United States evoked emotional memories of the wartime alliance he had helped to forge a decade previously, whilst to the Americans, conversations had been conducted in essentially businesslike fashion. Evelyn Shuckburgh, a Foreign Office official on the British delegation, recalled that Truman was inclined to be ‘quite abrupt’, and, after Churchill's delivery of another declaration of Anglo-American solidarity, would ‘cut it off with a “Thank you, Mr Prime Minister. We might pass that to be worked out by our advisers.” A little wounding. It was impossible not to be conscious that we are playing second fiddle.’Footnote ⁵³

The growing belief that British officials would remain excluded from the innermost thinking of the US military and political authorities was confirmed in the first few months of 1952. The COS, for example, remained unhappy about the quality of information emanating from Washington over the most basic plans for general war. Field Marshal Sir William Slim, the chief of the imperial general staff, had held talks in Washington with the JCS before Churchill's arrival, and requested more detail about the air atomic offensive that the Americans were contemplating unleashing against the Soviet Union. ‘The U.K. was at present being asked’, he complained,

The JCS responded that they were prevented by the McMahon Act from conveying detailed information about the US stockpile, but could offer a general indication of what strategic air attack might accomplish against the Soviet Union to a select number of Britons.Footnote ⁵⁴ In fact, the results of the subsequent briefing that Churchill and other senior officials received on 18 January 1952 were considered disappointing by the British military authorities, conveying little that was not already known or could be confidently inferred.Footnote ⁵⁵

Meanwhile, almost a year after initially being mooted, the first substantive session of Anglo-American politico-military discussions over the COS's ‘stopline’ paper was finally convened in Washington in early February 1952. The talks ultimately proved unproductive, as both sides used the opening rounds to explore conditions under which general war might arise.Footnote ⁵⁶ Franks drew particular attention to differences between the two sides on the central question of the nature of atomic war:

As a result, British officials proposed the idea of delivering an ultimatum to the Soviet Union when general hostilities were imminent and before initiation of large-scale atomic warfare, as for example, in the case of a limited Russian probe in an area considered vital.Footnote ⁵⁷

During the ‘stopline’ talks, the US officials present had tended to go along with the British view that any general war involving nuclear weapons was likely to be both terrible and prolonged, carrying the implication that it would be so disastrous that virtually any risks had to be run to avoid it. The logical inference was that, except in the case of an all-out Soviet attack, the Western response to relatively minor communist incursions would be muted for fear of escalation. Since the Anglo-American discussions allowed the venting of such views, however, it proved impossible for British officials to reach an agreed record of the February 1952 ‘stopline’ talks with the American participants. Whatever they might be prepared to admit orally, or in an informal setting, US officials were unwilling to be constrained by any written document which might be taken as a guideline as to how they would react under unpredictable circumstances. Moreover, they were palpably anxious that later congressional inquiries, perhaps launched after some setback in the Cold War, would be critical of any ‘agreements’ made with the British over such a controversial subject as how the United States would choose to respond to Soviet aggression.Footnote ⁵⁸

V

The Anglo-American debates over consultation took a new turn after the arrival in office of the Eisenhower administration in January 1953. The president and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, were convinced that the distinctions previously made between nuclear and conventional munitions should be removed, and that American nuclear superiority should be more readily flaunted as an instrument for the containment of Sino-Soviet expansionism.Footnote ⁵⁹ Both were also aware they faced an uphill task convincing their principal allies that a greater readiness to threaten nuclear use was a prudent policy to follow, particularly in the face of growing Soviet nuclear capabilities, but they were nevertheless determined that future ‘limited wars’ should not degenerate into the kind of stalemate witnessed in Korea, where US conventional forces suffered casualties for no apparent gain at communist hands.

In March 1953, the British foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, travelled to Washington and asked whether Eisenhower could give a ‘private, personal assurance – as Truman had done with Attlee and Churchill – that the President would not decide on the use of atomic weapons without consultation with the United Kingdom’. Such an assurance, Eden avowed, would receive no publicity and would not constitute a power of veto. Advising Eisenhower against making any such commitment, however, Dulles noted the ‘serious difficulties’ it might create with congress and that isolating the atomic bomb for special treatment would ‘tend to strengthen the stigma of distinctive immorality erroneously associated with it’. Eden therefore received a flat refusal from Eisenhower when he put the matter directly, and was instead offered a general assurance that there would be consultation in the event of increased tension or the threat of war.Footnote ⁶⁰ Now even deprived of the limited personal assurances that Truman had previously offered, the British government was also alarmed by the mounting evidence they saw of an increasingly hostile attitude to the communist regime in China, not least as American forces continued to suffer casualties in Korea. The flavour of the period was captured by Sir Roger Makins, now Britain's ambassador in Washington, who wrote to Eden in February 1953:

One sign of mounting impatience was the Eisenhower administration's willingness to give stronger public backing to Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government on Taiwan in its claims to represent China, and the veiled threats employed during the Korean armistice talks to widen the scope of the fighting.

Eisenhower had tried to assuage British fears over precipitate use of the bomb. Following his final meeting with Eisenhower in March 1953, Eden reported to Churchill that the president ‘clearly had it in mind that we ought to trust him in the general handling of his policy and not ask for detailed assurances on specific points’. Later, Eisenhower again tried to reassure assembled British officials by venturing that ‘While … he could not give us specific undertakings he could not conceive of any circumstances except one of extreme emergency when he would not consult us.’ The president then referred to the Korean case as an example of the latter.Footnote ⁶² In fact, the Korean example amounted to precisely the kind of scenario that so concerned the British. Once bombing of targets within China proper began, it would be very difficult to contain any conflict and the Americans might yield to the overwhelming temptation to employ nuclear weapons. With China facing ruinous defeat, British officials were convinced that the Soviet Union would then be compelled to intervene to save its main communist ally, probably by way of a large-scale attack on the West, using its conventional superiority in manpower in Europe with support from its growing stock of nuclear weapons.

Some of London's unease with the prevailing situation was reduced by the conclusion of the Korean armistice in July 1953, which at least seemed to mark the suspension of a dangerous setting for East–West conflict. Regarding the Eisenhower administration and the issue of nuclear consultation, perhaps the most astonishing – and hitherto little acknowledged – change in the Anglo-American atmosphere nevertheless occurred in October 1953, just as the US National Security Council (NSC) was discussing the fundamentals of the ‘New Look’ in national security policy that it was soon to adopt. In mid-October, spurred by the administration's greater readiness to contemplate nuclear use, Dulles travelled to London to modify the existing understandings on prior consultation. Dulles presented a text to Eden explaining that, under its new policy, the United States would

Dulles evidently believed that Eden accepted the new policy, but returning to Washington, the British ambassador, Makins, sought clarification and was told by Dulles that this formulation was intended to modify the ‘joint decision’ assurances reflected in the January 1952 communiqué on British bases.

Dulles was effectively asking that the ‘joint decision’ called for in that document should be considered as already taken, hence giving the United States prior consent to act as it saw necessary. This was exactly the kind of ‘blank cheque’ that in 1951 the Americans had thought would be unacceptable to the British. The formal British reply to Dulles was that ‘this being a matter in which literally Britain's survival may be at stake’ it was ‘essential that H.M.G. should retain actual as well as theoretical power to decide in the light of the circumstances at the time on the use to which the U.S. bases in the U.K. should be put’. It was contended that the 1952 understanding should stand as before, but, in recognition of American strategic needs, that there should also be ‘constant consultation’ between the two countries and that the urgent time factor behind a possible decision would always receive attention.Footnote ⁶⁴

The fruitless result of Dulles's trip to London was reflected in subsequent discussions within the Eisenhower administration about the nuclear aspects of its New Look national security policy and how this would affect relations with allies. At the end of October 1953, as the NSC revisited the subject, Dulles gave an account of his recent exchanges with the British, at which point Eisenhower interjected that they involved the use of the British bases by the US in an emergency. In revealing fashion, Eisenhower explained:

One of the basic principles behind the New Look was to use allies’ resources, and to strengthen alliance relationships more generally, so that the direct burdens of defence spending on the US could be reduced. Eisenhower's remarks indicate that he took this principle seriously, contemplating how he would carry out the requirements of joint decision-making as specified in the 1952 communiqué; his sentiments were also reflected in a professed willingness to share nuclear information with close allies such as the British, despite the restrictions stipulated by the 1946 McMahon Act.

VI

British concerns over the directions being taken by the US administration in its nuclear planning and intentions, particularly as applied to the Far East, reached a climax at the Bermuda Conference in December 1953. Outlining American action following a breach of the Korean truce by the communist side, Eisenhower told Churchill at Bermuda that the United States would resort to employing atomic weapons against military targets in China, sparing only the major population centres.Footnote ⁶⁶ The President had received the impression that Churchill was relatively sanguine about US thinking at this stage, but in fact, the British delegation was disturbed by what it had learnt of American intentions.Footnote ⁶⁷ Eden informed Churchill that Eisenhower's talk of employing nuclear weapons against China extended further than the previous assent the British had given to the retaliatory conventional bombing of Chinese airfields just north of the Yalu river in Manchuria which offered support to a resumption of communist aggression in Korea. As any Soviet retaliation to a US atomic strike against China was most likely to be directed at US airbases in East Anglia, Eden wanted to raise again the subject of consultation on action to take in the event of a resumption of Korean hostilities.Footnote ⁶⁸

Reacting to news that the administration intended to take any new war directly to China itself, using atomic bombs if necessary, one member of the British delegation at Bermuda, the Deputy Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, Pierson Dixon, was adamant that, ‘We totally disagree with such action and would have to say so publicly and say that we had so informed the Americans if, in the event, we were asked whether we had been consulted in advance. The present notification does not constitute consultation.’ The danger that nuclear use anywhere would start a general war, with Britain an initial target for Soviet attack, made it imperative that agreement to joint consultation in advance of a specific decision should be sought from the Americans before the conference concluded. If such agreement was impossible, Dixon argued, ‘we must seriously consider protecting ourselves by asking them to remove their bases from the United Kingdom.’Footnote ⁶⁹ This radical step was one rarely voiced in British official circles – the US bases were considered vital to the Western alliance if faced with direct Soviet aggression in Europe – but that it should occur to Dixon demonstrated how the approach to nuclear use adopted by the Eisenhower administration had the capacity to alienate even the closest of US allies.

The Americans were certainly alert to the main currents of British thinking and appreciated their underlying causes. On the second day of the talks, in a direct and emotional appeal to Eisenhower, Churchill expressed his fears that any use of nuclear weapons would bring on a third world war and the bombing of London. With the capital's defences inadequate, he ‘could not bear to think of “the destruction of all we hold dear, ourselves, our families and our treasures; and even if some of us temporarily survive in some deep cellar under mounds of flaming and contaminated rubble there will be nothing to do but take a pill to end it all.”’ Eisenhower's response was coolly to point out that he did not think the Soviet Union would attack in the West if atomic weapons were used to respond to renewed fighting in Korea.Footnote ⁷⁰ The impression this made on Eisenhower confirmed to him that, ‘British thinking – apparently both personal and governmental thinking – still looks upon the possible use of the atomic bomb as the initiation of a completely new era in war. Even more than this, it looks upon any decision of this kind as a policy question of the gravest import.’ Eisenhower felt this mindset had arisen because the British did not yet have the means to deliver their own atomic weapons, whilst their prior experience of bombing during the Second World War rendered them especially sensitive to fears that they would be targets for Soviet atomic attack. ‘They apparently cling to the hope (to us fatuous)’, the President concluded, ‘that if we avoid the first use of the atomic bomb in any war, that the Soviets might likewise abstain. Our thinking, on the other hand, has come a long way past this kind of conjecture and hope. Specifically we have come to the conclusion that the atomic bomb has to be treated just as another weapon in the arsenal.’Footnote ⁷¹

In a final set of talks in Bermuda, the British hoped to press the Americans on how they would pursue any bombing campaign against China. Eden was particularly anxious about how little was known in detail about US intentions, speculating that they might include an attempt to land Nationalist Chinese forces on the mainland, or to launch widespread nuclear attacks, all without reference to the United Nations. Eden's minimum requirement was that the UN should be consulted ‘before steps are taken which could result in retaliation on East Anglia or unleash a third world war.’Footnote ⁷² The results of the final discussions held on 7 December were notably ambiguous, generating a considerable discrepancy in Anglo-American records on the substance of remarks made by Eisenhower when pressed about consultation. The British record of the conversation had Eisenhower affirming, in an apparent concession: ‘Certainly there should be consultation on the circumstances in which it [the atomic bomb] might be used and the targets against which it should be employed.’Footnote ⁷³ In early 1954, however, when the British finally received a copy of the American minutes, this part of the conversation was reduced to Eisenhower merely saying, ‘It was not possible to go into all the details of this problem at this time, and the experts should consult further together.’ Foreign Office officials were naturally concerned by such a sharp divergence between the accounts, particularly since they believed they had achieved a greater measure of agreement over advance consultation than Eden had received during his visit to Washington the previous March.Footnote ⁷⁴ Both Eisenhower and Churchill were each alerted to the problem, but neither wished to re-open the issue.Footnote ⁷⁵

In the aftermath of Bermuda, ambiguity rather than clarity was in some respects preferable for the British, since an attempt to arrive at an agreed position might instead have provoked another flat US refusal to consult. As far as the Americans were concerned, even if a verbal assurance had been given, it did not amount to a binding official commitment which would operate under any and all circumstances, whatever interpretation British officials might put upon the minutes of a particular meeting. At the same time, Bermuda had underlined how ready the Americans now seemed to be to use atomic weapons in a tactical setting when faced with large-scale communist aggression. This remained a cause of particular concern in London. In early February 1954, Eden presented a paper to the Cabinet's Defence Committee discussing whether Britain's Commonwealth partners should be told of British resistance to the new lines of US policy, venturing that, ‘the consequences of the use of atomic weapons against an enemy in the Far East might be so serious for the United Kingdom that we cannot agree to such action in advance and must insist upon being consulted at the time before it is taken.’Footnote ⁷⁶

The implications of this situation in a European context were also becoming more obvious as the Eisenhower administration extended the ideas of the New Look to NATO strategy. In April 1954, Dulles presented a statement to the North Atlantic Council in Paris on the new US thinking about the role of ‘massive retaliatory power’ in the defence of Europe.Footnote ⁷⁷ Eden was again concerned by the suggestion that use of nuclear weapons in response to a Soviet attack would be virtually automatic, and wrote to Dulles stressing that many factors other than military ones had to be considered in a decision to use nuclear weapons. Specifically referring back to their discussions at Bermuda, Eden reminded Dulles in significant terms: ‘you know our strongly held views on the need for consultation before any decision is taken.’Footnote ⁷⁸ This message was sufficiently important for Dulles to report to the NSC on 6 May 1954 that Eden ‘was holding strongly to the idea of consultation between the United States and the United Kingdom prior to any decision to use atomic weapons. In effect … this was [an] indication of the British desire to get themselves into a position to veto the use of atomic weapons by the United States; whereas, in fact, [he] had intended his NATO statement on the subject to constitute the “consultation with our allies” which was called for.’Footnote ⁷⁹ As in October 1953, Dulles’ NATO statement appears to have been another attempt by him to liberate the Eisenhower administration from any sense of commitment to a process of consultation.

VII

Some of the ramifications of Anglo-American disharmony over nuclear consultation were already being made apparent by the Indochina crisis, even as Eden and Dulles conducted their exchanges regarding the NATO Council meeting. During April 1954, imminent French defeat at Dien Bien Phu by communist Viet Minh forces had generated intense speculation over whether the United States would intervene with military forces in Indochina, and whether it could attract allied support for such intervention.Footnote ⁸⁰ The Americans had made no secret of the fact that, if Chinese forces were introduced into Indochina in order to assist the Viet Minh, they would consider responding with nuclear weapons beyond the immediate area of the fighting, implying striking at China itself. An explicit warning to this effect had been delivered by Dulles in a speech given to the American Legion at St Louis in early September 1953, and repeated in an address to the Council on Foreign Relations in January 1954, from which the press had spawned the phrase ‘massive retaliation’ to describe the essence of the Eisenhower administration's policy.Footnote ⁸¹ For Eden and other British officials, US action to retrieve the French position might trigger Chinese involvement, repeating the dangerous scenario that had unfurled during the first winter of the Korean War in 1950–1. Now, however, the US administration seemed much less inclined to keep any conflict with China limited, and determined to reserve all discussions over nuclear use to itself.Footnote ⁸² With no right of consultation, the British might find themselves unable to raise objections and thereby curb any tendency of the US administration to be swept along by a tide of domestic political pressure toward the decision to use nuclear weapons.

It was regarded as essential by British leaders that they register early opposition to intervention in Indochina, and support for a negotiated solution to the Franco-Viet Minh war at the forthcoming Geneva Conference, to avert this alarming scenario. When Admiral Arthur W. Radford, the Chairman of the JCS, travelled to London at the end of April 1954 in an attempt to persuade British ministers to back military intervention, he was told by Churchill: ‘The British people would not be easily influenced by what happened in the distant jungles of South East Asia, but they did know that there was a powerful American base in East Anglia and that war with China, who would invoke the Sino-Russian Pact, might mean an assault by Hydrogen bombs on these islands.’Footnote ⁸³ Meeting Dulles in Geneva on 1 May 1954, Eden was categorical: ‘we must really see where we were going. If the Americans went into the Indo-Chinese war, the Chinese themselves would inevitably step up their participation. The next stage would be that the Americans and the Chinese would be fighting each other, and that was in all probability the beginning of the third world war.’Footnote ⁸⁴

It might be assumed that the Eisenhower administration would be inclined to disregard the hesitations and doubts of its British ally. Indeed, there is much evidence to show deep American frustration with the position Britain adopted during the Indochina crisis. Yet there are also indications that these signs of allied disunity were disturbing to Eisenhower, Dulles and other senior policymakers, since they immediately exposed the potential weaknesses and contradictions of the New Look, with its stress on ‘Free World’ strength and alliance relationships potentially undermined by the extra reliance that was now to be placed on nuclear weapons in US national security policy. British bases formed a crucial component of the US Strategic Air Command's plans, with its main force of B-47 medium bombers dependent on them for recovery and replenishment in the first days of intensive air bombardment of Russian targets. Long-term deployment of nuclear weapons to American airbases in the United Kingdom actually began in the spring of 1954, just as the French position in Indochina started to deteriorate, so forming an important part of the strategic context of Anglo-American relations within which the crisis in South East Asia would unfold. On 29 April 1954, the NSC Planning Board discussed the use of nuclear weapons to destroy Viet Minh troop concentrations around Dien Bien Phu. One of the possible consequences that the Board considered was whether France and Britain would, ‘take alarm, with possible repercussions on U.S. airbases overseas? If they should seek to cancel our bases on such a ground, how valuable are our allies and these bases?’ Having heard these views, alongside other arguments, that same day Eisenhower declared that he did not see how the atomic bomb could be used unilaterally by the United States in such circumstances.Footnote ⁸⁵

British resistance to military intervention in Indochina, and the disapproval gained in US circles for the conciliatory role they played at Geneva, led some Americans to question the value of their alliances in the Cold War. In mid-May 1954, Dulles mused that vulnerability to air attack rendered the British highly sensitive to any risk of nuclear war, hence their opposition to the policy of treating nuclear weapons as conventional. Likewise, ‘They assert that our relations are such that we should not at any time or anywhere use any form of atomic power for military purposes without their prior consent. This greatly inhibits our military planning and undermines the premises of our present military policy.’Footnote ⁸⁶ Matters finally came to a head in June 1954 during a pivotal NSC meeting at which JCS ideas to exploit current US nuclear superiority by putting greater pressure on the Soviet Union were considered. Dulles expressed the view that ‘our “tough policy” was becoming increasingly unpopular throughout the free world; whereas the British “soft policy” was gaining prestige and acceptance both in Europe and Asia.’ If JCS recommendations were followed ‘very few of our allies would follow us … The tide is clearly running against us in the channel of this tough policy. If we are to continue to pursue it we shall lose many of our allies, and this in itself compels a reappraisal of our basic policy.’ The influence of the United States, Dulles warned, was being reduced by gradual communist penetration and distrust of US strategy among close allies: ‘We must recognise the fact that we can no longer run the free world.’Footnote ⁸⁷

Although prepared to consider a more unilateral approach, Dulles's basic belief was that the support of allies in both Europe and Asia was crucial if they were to provide the local forces needed to oppose any communist advance, as well as the overseas bases from which US retaliatory power could then be deployed. As he and Eisenhower spent many meetings explaining to their impatient colleagues, only the pooling of ‘Free World’ resources gave the US the prospect of prevailing in the long haul of the Cold War.Footnote ⁸⁸ It was this basic calculation of American interest that tended to carry most weight in an administration always conscious of the finite resources it could command and the fissiparous nature of alliances it attempted to lead, and it gave British policymakers some crucial leverage in the Cold War crises of the 1950s when they counselled restraint rather than escalation.

VIII

As this article has shown, consultation over the possible use of nuclear weapons was a highly contentious aspect of the relationship between Britain and the United States during the early Cold War period. American possession of overwhelming nuclear strength made good relations with Washington indispensable for successive British governments as the ultimate deterrent against any possible Soviet attack in the Europe. But as the nuclear stockpile held by the Soviet Union grew after 1949, so did the high probability that Britain would bear the brunt of any Russian atomic offensive, inducing in British political and military leaders a strong awareness of the terrible dangers when confronting Soviet power. ‘The difficulty’, as Churchill explained the dilemma in May 1954, ‘is how far we ought to go in restraining [the United States] from taking risks which we cannot share.’Footnote ⁸⁹

Those risks became evident after the spread of the Cold War to East and South East Asia in 1950, and the deep hostility that emerged between the United States and the communist regime in China, particularly following the latter's intervention in the Korean War. Playing host to an array of US airbases made the UK an inviting target, and after the hurried talks and ambiguous outcome of Attlee's trip to Washington in December 1950, there was also a need for a clear understanding that prior British approval was needed before such airbases could be used. Whilst the Americans proved resistant to venturing beyond a general undertaking to discuss the changing circumstances of the Cold War, the right of consultation regarding the use of US airbases was formerly conceded in 1951. This carefully crafted form of words was capable of various interpretations, but allowed British governments to refute claims from domestic critics that the Americans enjoyed complete freedom over operation of the bases. But the absence of a firm and more general assurance that a British voice would be heard in any final decision to employ the atomic bomb by the United States was still a major source of unease.

After the Eisenhower administration assumed office, it appeared that the British position had grown even weaker. Eisenhower had quickly rejected attempts to reaffirm the personal assurances given by Truman to both Attlee and Churchill that he would make every effort to consult in the event that the use of nuclear weapons was being considered. This step was expressly presented in March 1953 as part of the administration's new and publicly avowed approach which purported to see no qualitative distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons, a position which no British Government could accept. In October 1953, an unsuccessful attempt was even made to rescind the 1951 agreement over the use of American airbases when Dulles visited London. At Bermuda in late 1953, however, the British expressed their serious concerns over the Americans’ predilection for unilateral nuclear action in the Far East in response to communist aggression. Apparent British conservatism in the face of communist threats was one reason why the Americans were so reluctant to consult the British over nuclear use, combined with congressional opposition to any weakening of the US capacity for instant and unrestrained action.

The basic point that Far Eastern issues had the most capacity to produce dissension within the Anglo-American relationship was illustrated only a few months later during the Indochina crisis of 1954. British opposition to military intervention in Indochina was grounded in their belief that an acceptable political settlement could still be reached at the Geneva Conference, but also, as this article contends, has to be understood within the context of the Anglo-American discussions over nuclear consultation that had preceded the crisis in 1953. In British eyes, local conflicts such as in Indochina, apparently minor in themselves, carried the dangerous potential to escalate to a nuclear level when US leaders still believed they held an overall margin of advantage over their communist adversaries. As the COS's first efforts in 1951 to define the ‘stoplines’ beyond which the communist side should not be allowed to advance at any costs had shown, the loss of positions in the Far East was not felt sufficiently grave to warrant crossing the nuclear threshold. Despite the Churchill Government's desire to restore a closer relationship with the United States than had been seen in the final years of Attlee's administration, and even to find more common ground over China policy, the British stance over the need for consultation had actually become more insistent by 1954.

Lack of support from crucial allies such as Britain was one major reason why the impetus for direct US military intervention in South East Asia during 1954 was eventually curbed. In the wake of the crisis, with the much-touted New Look in national security policy placing a high premium on the maintenance of a global network of alliances to underpin US power and deter potential aggressors, senior Eisenhower administration officials were led to question the whole basis of their nuclear policy, containing as it did the potential to alienate erstwhile supporters. Awareness of the apparent limits of US power was, in fact, often present in the thinking of the Eisenhower administration in the years after the end of the Korean War: if the US were to go to war with the Soviet Union, or even China, it did not want to do so alone. In the final analysis, this fundamental feeling was worth more to the British in their nuclear relations with the United States than the prolonged struggles over the language of consultation that had followed Attlee's visit to Washington in 1950.