French Navy nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, Le Temeraire, during French President Emmanuel Macron's visit to the Nuclear Submarine Navy Base of Ile Longue in Crozon, north-western France today. Photo / Yoan Valat, Pool via AFP
France will bring European nations into nuclear military drills and could allow its neighbours to host nuclear-capable fighter planes for the first time.
President Emmanuel Macron made the announcement as growing mistrust in the United States propels once-taboo plans for the French nuclear arsenal to protect Europe.
European capitals have never gone this far in making contingencies for a homegrown nuclear umbrella independent of US guarantees.
Macron’s announcements, in a speech at a military base that hosts France’s nuclear submarines, amount to the first key steps towards establishing a European deterrent.
Some of Macron’s predecessors in the Elysee Palace had resisted extending the French nuclear umbrella further across Europe, and other European nations were even more reluctant, for fear of alienating the US, which possesses a far larger atomic arsenal.
But as a more militarised, polarised world has prompted an increasing number of nations to eye nuclear weapons - and as US President Donald Trump has injected tension into the transatlantic relationship - Macron is now going further than any French president in negotiating with other European leaders on extending France’s protection.
In his speech today at the L’Ile Longue base on the Atlantic coast, Macron unveiled a shift in nuclear doctrine that will increase France’s total number of nuclear warheads for the first time in decades.
He also revealed that France is in early stage talks to expand co-operation on nuclear deterrence with Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden and Denmark.
“In this dangerous and unstable world, to be free, we must be feared,” Macron declared, standing in front of a nuclear submarine that he said carries as much firepower as all the bombs dropped on Europe in World War II. “And to be feared, we must be powerful.”
France has nearly 300 nuclear warheads, while the US and Russia have thousands.
Yet France is the world’s fourth-largest nuclear power - the only one in the European Union - and, unlike Britain’s, the French arsenal is nationally produced and maintained, independent of the US.
As Trump presses America’s once-closest allies across to take charge of Europe’s conventional defence, US officials have offered assurances that the US nuclear umbrella will remain in place.
Even so, over the past year, interest has grown in Europe about engaging Paris on how its nuclear weapons might fill gaps and protect other nations, too.
Ruptures with Washington - including over Russia policy, Trump’s bid for Greenland, and the Administration’s frequent rebukes of the 27-nation EU - have left officials mistrustful of the US.
In his much-awaited speech, Macron outlined what he called “forward deterrence” and described the increase in France’s nuclear warheads as necessary for credibility.
He cited the US looking elsewhere, a militarily assertive Russia next-door and a rise in Chinese power.
He also said France would no longer reveal how many warheads it has stockpiled.
Unlike the US, France has not deployed nuclear weapons beyond its borders. American nuclear bombs, have been stationed at Nato bases in Europe, including in Germany and Belgium, since the 1950s, after the end of World War II.
France’s strategy will now allow for stationing nuclear assets elsewhere in Europe in some circumstances, Macron said, referring to nuclear-armed Rafale fighter jets.
“Our strategic air forces could be spread deep into the European continent,” Macron said, without offering details.
This signalling, he added, would “complicate the calculus for our enemies”.
He said that France is updating its nuclear doctrine in “full transparency” with Washington, and that any plans would be a distinct effort but “perfectly complementary” with Nato.
France, a member of the Western military alliance, has maintained a nuclear posture independent of it, declining, for example, to participate in Nato’s nuclear planning group.
Britain, also a member of Nato and the only other European nuclear power, has a smaller arsenal, estimated at about 225 warheads.
Britain observed a French nuclear drill last year, as the two nations pledged to intensify European co-operation.
Bruno Tertrais, deputy director of the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research, called Macron’s speech “the most significant update to French nuclear deterrence policy in 30 years”, while noting the president did not provide technical details on capabilities.
Macron said the eight European countries in discussions about nuclear arrangements with France could have their conventional forces join nuclear war games.
Still, he made it clear that the nuclear button remains solely in the hands of the French president.
That has been a point of friction in the domestic debate as the far-right and far-left criticise Macron’s initiative as undermining France’s national interests.
With about 14 months left in his second and final term, Macron has a limited window to cement any plans before the 2027 French election of his successor.
Marine Le Pen’s Eurosceptic far-right party, National Rally, is gaining in polls.
“There will be no sharing of the ultimate decision, nor its planning nor its implementation,” Macron told government and military officials at the base in northwest France.
“By virtue of our constitution, it belongs only to the president of the republic, accountable to the French people.”
Berlin later said in a statement with Paris that the two would initiate co-operation this year, including with German forces taking part in French nuclear drills and joint visits to “strategic” sites.
Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, described plans for a French deterrent as “a second insurance policy rather than a replacement (at this stage) for the US nuclear guarantee”.
Before Trump returned to power or Russia launched a war in Ukraine, Macron had voiced support in 2020 for dialogue with other European leaders on the role of France’s nuclear deterrent in the continent’s security.
His proposals received little enthusiasm, including from Germany and other European members of Nato, which were accustomed to relying on US nuclear capabilities and promises of protection.
But the rift with Washington and a year of Trump’s policy gyrations have cast a pall over Nato’s Article 5 collective defence clause - the transatlantic promise than an attack against one is an attack against all - and shaken the confidence of Washington’s staunchest European proponents.
“To be powerful, we must be more united,” Macron said. “I believe I can say our partners are ready.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk confirmed that his country is in talks with France “and a group of closest European allies” on nuclear deterrence. “We are arming up together with our friends so that our enemies will never dare to attack us,” Tusk wrote.
France’s nuclear doctrine has long referred to a broad and purposely ambiguous “European dimension”, but the contours of the extended French nuclear umbrella now under debate, or a joint French-Britain deterrent for Europe, remain blurry.
Negotiations to define them will be complicated and take time, fraught with questions of sovereignty and cost, and varying European degrees of comfort in breaking from Washington.
“What I want more than anything,” Macron said. “Is for Europeans to regain control of their own destiny.”
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