ABSTRACT
The post-Cold War world raises some fundamental questions about nuclear deterrence, particularly for Britain and France. Britain aims to maintain a four-boat level of commitment to the strategic deterrent in the Trident successor to Polaris. French nuclear forces are more diverse, reflecting the more self-sufficient rationale under which they have always been developed and produced. It is technically classifiable as strategic, France fields 18 Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) launchers in two squadrons, each carrying one warhead. The rationales by which Britain and France maintain nuclear forces are inevitably a mixture of military and political motives. Types of rationale for British and French nuclear forces rationales based on East-West deterrence, and those based on specific national purposes some residual elements still stand up in the new Europe. The analysis so far indicates that the end of the Cold War leaves British and French independent nuclear forces standing on some thin strategic rationales.
