Many choices can be criticized for the President of the Republic, but not its consistency in European matters. Long before Donald Trump’s return and even before the Russian attack on Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron had alerted Europe to “the state of brain death” of NATO and on the need to build a “strategic autonomy” with the perspective a European power. In this approach – appreciated by a French people who have twice elected a candidate assuming this conviction loud and clear -, the chief of the armies proposes to open the debate on a “strategic umbrella” French to European states. The case is serious, because evoking nuclear deterrence is to speak of apocalyptic destructive potentialities and not of classic partnerships between states selling drones or exchanging experiences of training of infantry soldiers.
Debate a military nuclear protection of European states means concretely asking two questions to the protector, and another to the protégé. The first two are as follows: 1/ The power that extends its umbrella actually has the ability To dissuade a potential attacker, not only by the magnitude of strikes but by their infallibility? 2/ Does this protective power have the will To keep your commitment at all costs, including in the face of a risk of nuclear counter-response on your own soil?
At the first question, all the experts answer in the affirmative, no one seriously doubling the technical quality of French warheads or vectors, namely our submarines of machine launchers and other burst bombers with the best in the world. In addition, the States to protect – we think in particular of Germany and Poland – would be at distances and in geographies that do not present any major difficulty. Important nuance, however: unlike an American nuclear umbrella capable, throughout the Cold War and beyond, easily cover at least two dozen European allies, the current French system would be credible for a significantly less considerable number of states.
But what about the second question concerning the will? Today, the majority of citizens follow the pro-Europe-power-power policy of the Elysée, but how far? Up to what type of risk? And for what allies? Furthermore and above all, who will be at the head of the armies-that is to say of the State-in 2027, and with what convictions on this burning file? Admittedly, the context was radically different, but the Czechs and the Slovaks remember with bitterness of this fatal day of 1938 where, in Munich, France had literally betrayed the military alliance which linked it to Prague. And the objective fact that this type of abandonment is found many times and in many latitudes in the long times of global geopolitical history will not necessarily be enough to reassure new protégés …
Should France offer alone its strategic protection?
For the protégé, precisely, the question is as follows: will it be serious enough and responsible to refrain from causing the wrath of one of his opponents by an objectively incendiary attitude, assured of an impunity corresponding to the “umbrella” of his protector? The diagram of the Summer 1914 is very different, we can refer to it to remind you that at least the actor, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, made his military alliance play with the powerful Germany as part of a fairly local quarrel and with an imperialist purpose, in front of Serbia. And led it (and all of Europe) in the disaster.
There remains a final question, more political than technical and moral, perhaps the most considerable: must France propose alone its strategic protection? Should it not try to strategically link to the United Kingdom whose new power and the population finally understand that “the special relationship” with Washington is now the past? Admittedly, British deterrence is not independent today vis-à-vis Washington-and for good reason-, but tomorrow? If Europe-power is built, it will be around this nucleus of still powerful historical allies, then why not start there? Question asked, a sign of a possible Copernican revolution across the Rhine, by the new German Chancellor himself …
Frédéric Enfl, columnist at L’Express, author of a doctoral thesis on Jerusalem, published under the title “Geopolitics of Jerusalem” (Flammarion, 2009).
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