Nuclear Assurance

Cdr S Shrikumar (retd)

The Korean war broke out on 25 June 1950. Just two months into the war, the South Korean Army and the US forces were on the verge of defeat. They were forced to retreat behind a defensive line known as the Pusan perimeter. The US President, Harry Truman, seriously contemplated the use of nuclear weapons.

Britain, however, viewed nuclear bombs as weapons of last resort and advised against their use. Britain’s advice, to exercise restraint, was prompted by its discernment of the fact that the strategic advantage of the West’s early lead in nuclear weapons had been nullified. The Soviet Union had already developed its own nuclear weapons arsenal. The real significance, of the Soviet and Western, nuclear weapon arsenals lay in the deterrence they provided against their use through the threat of retaliation.

Britain, although opposed to the tactical use of nuclear weapons, recognised their strategic value as a deterrent. Lawrence Freedman, in his book, Britain and Nuclear Weapon, which traces the history of Britain’s nuclear weapons development, writes, ‘Prime Minister Winston Churchill encouraged the development of the atomic bomb during the war and, while in opposition, had identified the American atomic monopoly as the major reason why the Soviet Union had not taken over the whole of Western Europe during the unsettled period of the late 1940s.’

British and French CASD

In April of 2019, the Royal Navy (RN) celebrated 50 years of the UK MoD’s longest running military operation--Operation ‘Relentless’. Since April 1969, for 52 unbroken years, the RN has deployed a ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) at sea. Armed with Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs), the RN’s SSBNs have acted as nuclear deterrents--lethal minatory signals to all potential aggressors.

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