ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on concurrent developments in ballistic missile defence technology were soon to challenge the categorical nature of such assessments and to open up a new dimension to the nuclear arms race. Announcement of the Government's decision to proceed with the development and manufacture of the hydrogen bomb was made in the annual Defence White Paper published on 17 February 1955. The practical groundwork for a post-war national programme began to be built when the first government atomic energy research establishment was inaugurated at Harwell, south of Oxford, in October 1945. The 'principles and procedures of peacetime Cabinet, ministerial, departmental and Parliamentary government' were circumvented when it came to the military nuclear field, and would remain so, in general, whichever complexion of government was in power over subsequent years.
