By The Editors

The Sword and the Shield: Britain, America, NATO, and Nuclear Weapons 1970-1976

by Kristan Stoddart

Palgrave MacMillan, 352 pages, $78

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.

So when we think of the 70’s most people think of disco, fat ties, and détente. Your book, The Sword and the Shield, covers Britain, the US and NATO nuclear cooperation. What was going on then as far as Western nuclear co-operation is concerned?

There are major issues in NATO doctrine which the US and UK as lead partners in NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group [NPG] are attempting to resolve. These revolve around the question of whether NATO can resist a major conventional attack by the Warsaw Pact without early resort to tactical nuclear weapons. This led to a highly detailed series of studies conducted in three phases of what might happen through the initial and follow-on use of nuclear weapons by either side or by both sides. These studies drew on intelligence assessments of the threat, what NATO required from its doctrine of “flexible response” and lessons learned from NATO exercises-both real world and paper. These were not questions that could be solved but instead sought to determine force levels and forward planning based around the 1969 Provisional Political Guidelines for the Initial Use of Tactical Nuclear Weapons—the PPGs.

Chevaline was the most technically difficult project that Britain had hitherto undertaken. It was a modification to Britain’s Polaris missiles-purchased from the United States by agreements in 1962/3- which replaced one of Polaris’ three warheads with a Penetration Aid Carrier which dispensed decoys designed to allow the remaining two warheads to penetrate Moscow’s anti-ballistic missile defenses; and with it to maintain the “Moscow Criterion”, which was Britain’s independent plan for strategic nuclear use should the worst ever have happened.

Weren’t there some pretty significant differences between the US and UK in regard to the doctrine of Flexible Response?

Flexible response meant different things to different nations and politico-military figures within those nations and to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). The US and Britain led the way in the NPG but did not always agree on doctrine given the different scale of their nuclear arsenals.

What are some of the basic differences between how the US and Britain saw their nuclear weapons?

For Britain, their primary objective was war prevention through nuclear deterrence. Anything beyond paper studies which contemplated nuclear war fighting as a credible response was avoided. However, given NATO’s numerical conventional disadvantage use had to be planned and that was the purpose of the studies on initial and follow-on use.

There must have been some pretty interesting episodes of sort of under-the-table dealing going on.

The triangle of discussions between the French, British and Americans regarding nuclear cooperation has not been written about in detail. I have detailed them as much as possible but the relationship between the US and France is particularly interesting but subject to particular political sensitivities even now.

Unlike the Cold War, many of the actors are non-state or can operate with state protection and it is difficult to attribute whether attacks come from individuals, groups of individuals, are state sponsored or are states themselves. These events can have a force multiplication factor far in excess of the numbers of individuals involved.

What are you working on next in this field?

I have just finished my final two books in the nuclear weapons field after which I will concentrate my efforts in the field of cyber security. One of the books, Facing Down the Soviet Union is the last in a planned trilogy which began with my 2012 book Losing an Empire and Finding a Role. Facing down the Soviet Union covers the breakdown in détente and the rise in tensions between East and West in the period before the accession of Mikhail Gorbachev and the ending of the Cold War. My other book, The British Nuclear Experience: The role of beliefs, culture and identity, has been co-authored with Professor John Baylis and covers the whole period from the 1940s through to the present. We argue that identity, beliefs and culture have decisively shaped the attitudes of British leaders towards the acquisition and retention of a nuclear capability.

Given your work and interest in both the nuclear and cyber security fields, do you think that one day the world could see a sort of digital Cold War with countries entering into a cyber-capabilities arms race? Or are we already seeing that to some extent?

In a number of respects we are already there although the political environment is no longer bipolar. A number of states already have both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. The Stuxnet attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility provided a proof of concept which showed that attacks on critical national infrastructure are possible. With computers and ICT forming the backbone of developed states across the globe, mutual vulnerability already exists. This also potentially extends to militaries. This is a situation that requires international agreement or we face a state of anarchy with no (or few) rules or norms on use. Unlike the Cold War, many of the actors are non-state or can operate with state protection and it is difficult to attribute whether attacks come from individuals, groups of individuals, are state sponsored or are states themselves. These events can have a force multiplication factor far in excess of the numbers of individuals involved.

Dr Kristan Stoddart is Lecturer in Cyber Security in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University, UK. He previously worked at the Mountbatten Centre for International Studies at the University of Southampton, UK. He is also author of Losing an Empire and Finding a Role: Britain, the USA, NATO, and Nuclear Weapons, 1964-1970 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2012).