Munich is a cursed name for European democracies. After the capitulation of 1938, this is the 2025 diktat, stated by the vice-president Vance, exegete of the Trumpian impulses, reformatted according to the cannons of Yale. It is again the time of truth for Europeans, and in particular for the French. Why is there in this context a French specificity?
We appear, apparently, like other major European countries: Germany, Poland, Italy and even if it does not belong to the European Union, the United Kingdom. We count our low military forces, add them and measure that, without American participation, we are unable to give a credible guarantee to Ukraine.
Union nuclear power
But France is not a conventional military power; It is the only nuclear power in the union and, moreover, completely autonomous vis-à-vis the United States. Regardless of the fact, secondary in strategic matters, that the United Kingdom does not belong to the EU, it certainly has, too, a deterrent, but this one, since the time of Harold Macmillan, is subject to a double American key. We are therefore nuclearly, unique. Since it existed, our nuclear weapon has been supposed to cover our “vital interests”. In the time of General de Gaulle, these were limited to our national territory. Over time, his successors made the concept of “vital interests” more vague and gradually affirmed that they incorporated a “European dimension” and Emmanuel Macron was the latest to affirm it with extreme clarity.
But where is the border today vital interests? We can presume that Berlin is there; Warsaw is less sure, and even less. As long as the US nuclear guarantee was more or less for Europe, it was difficult for France to be more explicit and our partners would have hardly appreciated, as a unilateral donation, our own guarantee.
The game is no longer the same
In the world according to January 22, so clearly assumed on February 14 and 15 in Munich, the game is no longer the same. Either France does not change anything publicly to its nuclear doctrine and its weight will be that of conventional power, with an army still built for overseas operations, undermined by our calamitous budgetary situation and therefore with limited means. Either the President of the Republic deals with the nuclear asset. I hear the cries of orfraie of staff officers, innumerable Norpois, frightened advisers at the idea of abandoning the cozy doctrine of employment designed from the time of the Cold War. But for the first time, the question, however complex, is legitimate. Is it a question of saying that France sanctuizes the whole territory of the European Union? Or even add that this guarantee applies, post-cease-fire, to Ukraine, with, what would be ideal, a parallel guarantee of the British as long as Washington allows them there? Should we be content to get out of the ambiguity that has the expression “European dimension” and, without going as far as an explicit guarantee, suggesting that there is a strong presumption that even Vilnius benefits, which makes you obvious What is Warsaw benefits almost 100 % and Berlin even more?
We are, we French, faced with an abysmal question. Far be it from me to think that the response is obvious and especially that France can decide unilaterally, jupiterian or Napoleonic, to grant their partners to our partners without having consulted them. Such a proposal will initially cause hostile reactions. Reluctance of those who will not want to recognize the end of the American guarantee, primary reflexes of German environmentalists, hostility of principle to the ascendancy of the “great nation”, inability to recognize the birth of a new world: so many oppositions To defeat one by one, humbly, laboriously, modestly, that is to say by following a method with the antipodes of French arrogance. But history rings at our door. For Emmanuel Macron, who seeks tirelessly to leave his trace, this is the opportunity to achieve it and erase his countless steps of clerk for the benefit of a historical initiative.
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