July 10, 2016

Britain Needs a New Place to Park Its Nukes

Featuring Elbridge Colby

Source: Foreign Policy

Journalist Dan De Luce

Within days of entering office, every British prime minister must carry out a grim task: writing letters of “last resort” to the commanders of the country’s nuclear-armed submarines. The letters are written out in long hand and placed in sealed safes in each of the nation’s four Vanguard-class submarines, all home-ported on the River Clyde in Scotland. The missives spell out the prime minister’s orders in the case that he and other government officials have been killed in a nuclear attack on Britain.

But after a majority of Brits voted last month to leave the European Union, those letters — and with them the U.K.’s nuclear arsenal — may become a relic of the past.

 

To read the full article, visit the Foreign Policy website. 

Authors

  • Elbridge Colby

    Director, Defense Program

    Elbridge Colby is the Director of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security, where he leads CNAS’ work on defense issues. Previously, Colby served as the D...