Britain is adding nukes for the first time since the cold war

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For decades Britain has boasted of its diminutive nuclear status. Of the five nuclear-armed powers recognised by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (npt), Britain’s arsenal is the smallest and the only one with a single means of delivery—submarines. Yet buried in its foreign and defence policy review on March 16th was a striking announcement: for the first time since the cold war, its stockpile will grow.

Successive British governments pruned the arsenal by more than half between the 1980s and 2000s, eager to show progress towards disarmament (see chart). In 2010 the government declared that Britain had fewer than 225 warheads, and would cut that to below 180 by the middle of this decade—a goal that was reaffirmed in 2015. That was thought sufficient to inflict unacceptable damage on Russia, the country’s main adversary.