The Nassau Agreement, concluded on 22 December 1962, was a treaty negotiated between President John F. Kennedy for the United States and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan for the United Kingdom. The agreement enabled the UK Polaris programme.
It was the result of a series of meetings by the two leaders over three days in the Bahamas following the U.S.'s cancellation of the AGM-48 Skybolt, the planned basis for the UKs entire nuclear deterrent in the 1960s. Under the agreement the US was to provide the UK with a supply of nuclear-capable Polaris missiles (under the terms of the Polaris Sales Agreement), in return for which the UK was to lease the Americans a nuclear submarine base in the Holy Loch, near Glasgow. The agreement was clear that the UK's Polaris missiles were part of a 'multi-lateral force' within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and could be used independently only when 'supreme national interests' intervened.
Read more about Nassau Agreement: Skybolt Crisis, Meeting of Minds
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