What happens when your American ally threatens to crash your currency instead of protecting you?
In November 1956, Britain and France learned. The Soviet premier was threatening rocket strikes on London and Paris. Their American ally — Dwight Eisenhower — chose to let the British pound crash unless the Suez invasion stopped. Britain caved by midnight. France was alone.
Both governments had already started nuclear programs years earlier — Britain in 1947, France in 1954. But Suez taught them what the bomb was really for: independence from a patron whose interests didn't always align with theirs.
Britain rebuilt its program from scratch — High Explosive Research, no spying, no Klaus Fuchs. Just British scientists, starting over. Hurricane, 1952, twenty-five kilotons inside a frigate at Monte Bello.