The genesis of Britain’s strategic political compulsions for developing a nuclear weapons can be traced to the ‘traumatic gap between [Britain’s] understandable expectations and the political realities of the [post-world war] international situation.’ The extensive collaboration between Britain and America during the World War II created hope in London that this cooperation would be extended post War. During the World War II, there was both military and strategic nuclear cooperation between the two nations; British scientists participated in the US Manhattan Project to develop nuclear weapons. Post war the Britain wanted US to extend the cooperation and ‘ceaselessly sought atomic collaboration they felt to be their due.’ However, strains …show more content…
Roosevelt signed the Quebec Agreement that allowed Britain to participated in parts of the US atomic project. There were two important clause in the agreement that ‘neither side would use the bomb without the other’s consent and neither side would communicate any atomic information to third parties except by mutual consent.’ It should be noted that the Quebec Agreement was a wartime pact and Churchill and Roosevelt agreed to extend the provisions of the pact by signing the Hyde Park Agreement in 1944. However, after the Roosevelt’s death, it was discovered that the Americans were not aware of the Hyde Park Agreement. These resulted in the British belief that the Americans wanted to maintain their post-war atomic monopoly. Though, Churchill’s successor Clement Attlee tried to revive atomic cooperations with the US, the passage of McMahon Act by the Congress in 1946 closed all the doors for any collaboration in the nuclear sector and ended the ‘special relationship’ shared by the nations. The McMahon Act made ‘it a criminal offence , subject to the gravest penalty including death, to transmit any restricted atomic information to another country.’ Some scholars believe that it is this isolation by US that led British to embark on its own nuclear