Nuclear Cooperation between Britain and France

The article touches the subject of the development of bilateral cooperation between France and UK in the nuclear field. The author examines the dynamics of this development throughout the entire period from the moment of nuclear weapons creation by UK (1952) and France (1960) until today. The nuclear cooperation of Paris and London still remains one of the key agenda for bilateral negotiations. This interaction took place in the context of NATO’s nuclear policy and the formation of EU’s defence policy. The United States significantly influenced the development of this bilateral partnership. In the mid-2010s, French-British nuclear cooperation became a new factor of international relations in EU. Still, it was only after the signing of Lancaster House Treaties in 2010 that experts noticed that the integral “French-British tandem” was created. However, contrary to the forecasts of the 1980s, the tandem did not become a basis for EU’s common nuclear policy as it opposed to the project aimed at creation of common European armed forces. It was at the time when EU failed to implement the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and, as a result, the French-British cooperation managed to fill the EU’s security policy vacuum. International political events of the early 2010s showed opposition to that project within the framework of the traditional French-German partnership in EU. This led to a partial decline of Germany’s role in the framework of EU’s military policy. The author concludes that in the longterm, the formation of the French-British tandem weaken rather than strengthen EU. Over the past half century, EU was a FrenchGerman project: it was based on the unification of German economic potential and French military political one. The transition of the leading role to the French-British tandem automatically makes EU more “Atlantic” meaning it is tied to NATO and the American military presence in Europe. The ongoing process of withdrawal of UK from EU reinforces this trend, since France remains a military ally of the country leaving EU.

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