Anglo-French Alliance Post World War 2

[Landshark]

Or Franco-British Alliance if you prefer.

What if in the post war years the governments of Britain and France decided to cooperate more closely in an effort to create a viable third power between the USA and the USSR? I don't mean a full on unification of the two countries or them becoming a third side in the Cold War but rather closer cooperation on military, scientific and economic matters resulting in them being able to act with greater independence from America within the Western Bloc.

I'm thinking of things like the two countries jointly developing nuclear weapons and submarines rather than having to get help from the US in exchange for various concessions. Stuff like that.

So could this go anywhere?

 

[Plumber]

In many cases this was OTL before Suez.

 

[Some Bloke]

This will be a big feature in my Mers El Kebir Resolution continuity.

 

[Simon]

I'm thinking of things like the two countries jointly developing nuclear weapons and submarines rather than having to get help from the US in exchange for various concessions. Stuff like that.

That might not save them all that much if any money. The French will no doubt be more than willing to pay half the programme costs to piggyback the UK's nuclear weapons knowledge, in our timeline they didn't test their first nuclear device until a couple of years after the UK had successfully tested a thermonuclear weapon, but that effectively locks the UK out of further nuclear cooperation with the US. I don't have the figures to hand but the trade in materials and knowledge exchange from the 1958 US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement were quite advantageous, the US Navy practically gave the Royal Navy their latest nuclear propulsion system for submarines. The Nassau Agreement which traded Polaris missiles for basing rights at Holy Loch was apparently an absolute steal. If these go away then even paying just half the costs alongside France to develop submarine reactors, submarine-launched ballistic missile, supplies of uranium and tritium is likely to be an overall increase over our timeline. Of course that's with hindsight so they might come to completely different conclusions.

 

[CalBear]

When do you see the occurring?

Is is before or after the Marshall Plan contributes $2,296,000,000 to the French recovery and $3,297,000,000 in 1948 dollars ($44.6B in 2014 dollars)? Or is is after Britain ended rationing in 1954?

 

[Simon]

The easiest solution is for the UK to either join the European Coal and Steel Community, or slightly more achievable have them make an approach around the time of the Messina Conference about joining and use the negotiations to try and push for it to be more of an inter-governmental/confederation organised and free trade based idea along the lines of the European Economic Area than the forerunner of a United States of Europe. You'd see increased trade and scientific cooperation such as Euratom which likely leads to closer relations, at least until they side with Germany on issues like the Common Agricultural Policy. That is actually an intriguing idea - rather than a Franco-German dominated European Economic Community one with three main powers.

 

[oreocruncher]

The easiest solution is for the UK to either join the European Coal and Steel Community, or slightly more achievable have them make an approach around the time of the Messina Conference about joining and use the negotiations to try and push for it to be more of an inter-governmental/confederation organised and free trade based idea along the lines of the European Economic Area than the forerunner of a United States of Europe. You'd see increased trade and scientific cooperation such as Euratom which likely leads to closer relations, at least until they side with Germany on issues like the Common Agricultural Policy. That is actually an intriguing idea - rather than a Franco-German dominated European Economic Community one with three main powers.

The problem is by the time of Messina, the Inner 6 countries were becoming disillusioned with the UK, and this led to them kicking them out of the negotiations (where they were observers).
And I doubt that the UK could have joined the ECSC originally, because there was a lack of intersubjectivity (shared understanding) over European integration even back then, according to a book I read...
In that book, the argument was that the Inner 6, in contrast to the UK in particular, shared an understanding of being "part of Europe", which they wanted to "build", entailing the surrendering of sovereignty in different areas (especially in key areas of economics and defence [with the failed EDC]). These countries wanted Britain to take the lead in doing so, but the UK didn't share that same feeling they did in this "building of Europe", leading them to feel "Fuck it, we do it on our own!"

The fact of the matter is that the UK didn't feel as much of a "need" for Europe as the Inner 6 did, even from the start...
And immediately post-WWII, according to the book and Nanwe, federalism was actually a fairly popular, widespread idea, which is witnessed by the disappointment over the Council of Europe, which was intergovernmental in nature...