The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

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British successfully tested their atomic bomb and, in 1957, they had exploded a
hydrogen bomb.
However, according to the Foreign Office’s memo:

“Britain bad tried to keep up with them [the U.S.A and U.S.S.R], but
now, in the age of the
hydrogen bomb, if we try to do so we shall
bankrupt ourselves.”51

Therefore, Britain could not afford any further financial burden, on top of
the existing ones, in
order to devise a method for reliable delivery of these
weapons to their targets, i.e. other than
dropping them from vulnerable bombers,
Eisenhower, on the other hand, had always been in favour of
U.K./U.S. nuclear
co-operation and had tried to use his influence to prevent the McMahon Act. In
his
meeting with MacMillan, in March 1957, Eisenhower suggested co-operation
between Britain and the United
States in the nuclear deterrence strategy evolving
within N.A.T.O.. Eisenhower bad even discussed such a
collaboration with
Churchill in 1953. In 1954, Eisenhower bad even managed to achieve
some
anmendments to the McMahon Act, despite a hostile Congress, in order to find
ways of bringing
the British back to a situation of co-operation. Eisenhower’s
interest in involving Britain in the
United States nuclear deterrence strategy at
Bermuda was due to the fact that the United States.
Government wanted to deploy
intermediate-range missiles, fitted with nuclear warheads, within range of
the
U.S.S.R., and Britain was the obvious site, given the long-standing arrangements
for American
bases.

As
Britain and the United States coincided in their interests, a further
agreement in the Bermuda meeting of
March 1957 was reached. Sixty
intermediate-range Thor missiles were to be based in Britain. This led to
the
Churchill and Truman agreement of 1952 (that “the use of these bases in an
emergency would
be a matter for joint decision”52) being replaced by the
Joint
control or ‘dual key’ system. This meant that the rockets could not be fired by any

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