It was 1964. The Cold War was in full swing, and the fear of a nuclear conflict was on everyone’s mind. France, already equipped with the A-bomb, was the world’s fourth atomic power. That year, the film Doctor Strangelove. A satirical comedy that has become legendary about nuclear risk and which sums up deterrence as “the art of producing in the mind of the enemy… the fear of attack”. Sixty years later, the bomb is back. After decades devoted to reducing arsenals, the nuclear arms race has started again in earnest, and is arousing new vocations on all continents.
In France, political alternations have had no effect on the doctrine of deterrence, and its arsenal (290 warheads) is sufficient to defend the vital interests of the nation. But not only that. Because, this is the new thing, Emmanuel Macron intends to bring about a European strategic culture. The idea, put forward several times since February 2020, has attracted a lot of criticism in France but has been rather well received abroad, particularly in northern Europe. What exactly is the Head of State proposing? That French vital interests now have a European dimension. Nothing revolutionary, in reality: this European reference was already present in the White Paper on National Defense published in 1972, and more recently, Jacques Chirac explained in 2006 that “the guarantee of our strategic supplies or the defense of allied countries are, among others, interests that must be protected.”
What is changing, however, with Emmanuel Macron is the publicity he wanted to give to this opening of French deterrence. “It is a way of assuming a little more this European dimension of French vital interests in order to strengthen our credibility with our allies,” explains Héloïse Fayet, a researcher at Ifri and specialist in nuclear issues. Above all, the context is doubly promising. First, because the war in Ukraine that broke out in February 2022 has raised awareness in Europe, where defense budgets are on the rise. And second, because the American umbrella is no longer an absolute guarantee, especially if Donald Trump returns to the White House.
“Thinking the unthinkable”
Can the French warheads take over? Will there be enough of them? “It’s a real debate, which is not settled: nuclear weapons have such a destructive capacity that 100 or 200 more bombs are not really different, believes Héloïse Fayet. Nevertheless, the size of the arsenal matters for those we want to dissuade and for those we want to reassure.”
Clearly, if France wants to play a leading role in European defence, it will not be able to do so without compensation. And this compensation consists precisely in ensuring the protection of its allies. By helping them to “think the unthinkable”, according to the formula of futurologist Herman Kahn, in the early 1960s.
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