A pillar of French sovereignty and source of national pride, France’s nuclear deterrent has long served as a symbol of the country’s independence from Washington. But as Europe’s faith in American protection wavers, does France’s nuclear umbrella offer a realistic alternative?
Issued on: 06/03/2025
By: Benjamin DODMAN
France has close to 300 nuclear warheads, which can be fired from aircraft based in France or from submarines. © Christophe Ena, AP
French President Emmanuel Macron has offered to hold talks on extending the protection offered by France’s nuclear arsenal to its European partners, amid fears of an American disengagement from Europe.
While the US has made no mention of plans to withdraw the nuclear umbrella that has protected the continent since the Cold War, its dramatically shifting stance on Ukraine, Russia and NATO has sparked alarm across Europe about the strength of America’s decades-long commitment to European security.
In a measure of the mounting anxiety, the leaders of Poland, Latvia and Lithuania – countries closely aligned with Washington – all welcomed Macron’s offer on Thursday as they gathered in Brussels for an emergency summit on European security.
That offer has, in fact, been on the table for years. The difference is that France’s European partners are now taking an interest, eager for security alternatives should US President Donald Trump leave them to dry – at the mercy of Russia.
Read more'We should have woken up earlier': Europe races to rearm as old alliances falter
Addressing the French public on the eve of the summit, Macron described Russia as a “threat to France and Europe” and said he had decided “to open the strategic debate on the protection of our allies on the European continent by our (nuclear) deterrent”. He added: “Europe’s future does not have to be decided in Washington or Moscow.”
French President Emmanuel Macron has offered to hold talks on extending the protection offered by France’s nuclear arsenal to its European partners, amid fears of an American disengagement from Europe.
While the US has made no mention of plans to withdraw the nuclear umbrella that has protected the continent since the Cold War, its dramatically shifting stance on Ukraine, Russia and NATO has sparked alarm across Europe about the strength of America’s decades-long commitment to European security.
In a measure of the mounting anxiety, the leaders of Poland, Latvia and Lithuania – countries closely aligned with Washington – all welcomed Macron’s offer on Thursday as they gathered in Brussels for an emergency summit on European security.
That offer has, in fact, been on the table for years. The difference is that France’s European partners are now taking an interest, eager for security alternatives should US President Donald Trump leave them to dry – at the mercy of Russia.
Read more'We should have woken up earlier': Europe races to rearm as old alliances falter
Addressing the French public on the eve of the summit, Macron described Russia as a “threat to France and Europe” and said he had decided “to open the strategic debate on the protection of our allies on the European continent by our (nuclear) deterrent”. He added: “Europe’s future does not have to be decided in Washington or Moscow.”
Distrust of America
The French nuclear deterrent is rooted in a lingering distrust of its American ally that dates back to the 1956 Suez Crisis, when Washington forced France and Britain to abandon efforts to recapture the strategic Suez Canal in a humiliating setback for Europe’s declining colonial powers.
Seen as an American “betrayal”, Suez convinced the French to develop their own nuclear deterrent in order to protect the nation’s “vital interests”.
A decade later, distrust of America and a desire to pursue strategic autonomy underpinned President Charles de Gaulle’s decision to withdraw France from NATO’s integrated command, resulting in the removal of US military assets from French soil.
Over the years, successive French leaders have urged European allies to reduce their reliance on the US – none more so than Macron, who has repeatedly called on Europe to guarantee its own security.
Read more France pushes shift to ‘wartime economy’ as US turns its back on Ukraine
As Washington turns its back on Ukraine, warms to an aggressive Russia and cuts Europe out of peace talks, French officials are now feeling vindicated. One analyst described the continent’s current predicament as “Macron’s told-you-so moment”.
05:59Focus © France 24
France’s ‘vital interests’
France is one of two nuclear powers in Europe, along with Britain, which is no longer part of the European Union and relies on US input to maintain its nuclear arsenal.
French nuclear deterrence is strictly conceived as defensive, designed to protect the country’s “vital interests”. The deliberately vague nature of these interests has traditionally given France greater leeway compared to Britain, whose nuclear capabilities are explicitly assigned to the defence of NATO.
Since a 2020 keynote speech, Macron has said that France's “vital interests” have a “European dimension” – comments that he reiterated in recent days. His predecessors have made similar statements in the past, with former president François Mitterrand once touting the need for a “European doctrine” on nuclear deterrence.
“Maintaining a certain vagueness about France’s vital interests is at the heart of the ‘strategic ambiguity’ that underpins nuclear deterrence,” said Alain De Neve, a researcher at the Royal Higher Institute for Defence in Brussels.
The idea, he added, “is to keep opponents in the dark about the scope of France's nuclear umbrella”.
Keep adversaries guessing
Nuclear deterrence involves maintaining ambiguity about which circumstances would lead to the use of nuclear weapons, in order to prevent a potential aggressor from calculating risks.
In this case, it means striking a balance between giving substance to French claims of a vested interest in Europe’s defence and avoiding detail about how far Paris would go to defend the continent.
France “likes to remind people of its capabilities in order to be credible in its deterrence”, said Emmanuelle Maitre, a senior research fellow at France's Foundation for Strategic Research.
“But there’s also an element of ambiguity, because it’s not a question of telling our adversary exactly what our red lines are,” she added. “No nuclear power does this.”
A French nuclear-armed submarine pictured at sea during a visit by President Emmanuel Macron to mark Bastille Day on July 14, 2017. © Fred Tanneau, AFP
Engaging in a constructive and permanent dialogue with its European partners would be an important first step towards extending France’s nuclear umbrella, argued De Neve.
“The mere fact that a permanent dialogue has been established could already leave Russia wondering whether an attack on, say, a Baltic state might lead to a nuclear escalation,” he explained.
Engaging in a constructive and permanent dialogue with its European partners would be an important first step towards extending France’s nuclear umbrella, argued De Neve.
“The mere fact that a permanent dialogue has been established could already leave Russia wondering whether an attack on, say, a Baltic state might lead to a nuclear escalation,” he explained.
Credibility gap
Responding to Macron’s televised address on Thursday, Russian officials lambasted the French leader’s “confrontational speech”, noting that his tough rhetoric was not backed up by military power.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Macron of “threatening” Russia and warned him against dragging the continent into a wider conflict. The ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suggested the French president might want help measuring his country’s true military size.
The US and Russia possess approximately 88 percent of the world’s total inventory of nuclear weapons, according to the Federation of American Scientists. They are followed at a distance by China, with France in fourth position and Britain in fifth.
“Without US support, the balance of power appears largely unfavourable to France, which has a total of 290 nuclear warheads compared to at least 1,600 deployed warheads and nearly 2,800 stockpiled warheads on the Russian side,” noted Benoît Grémare, a defence analyst at the Université Jean Moulin in Lyon, writing on The Conversation.
“Moving toward a Europeanisation of nuclear force means increasing deterrent capabilities and, therefore, expanding the French arsenal so it can respond to threats affecting all 27 EU member states,” Grémare added.
America’s vastly superior firepower, and the greater diversity of its arsenal, explain why European countries have so far relied on Washington for their protection rather than Paris or London.
In contrast, the discrepancy with Russia’s nuclear arsenal points to a credibility gap for France’s deterrent.
As a lawmaker from the hard-left France Unbowed party argued during a heated debate in parliament this week, if France doesn’t trust mighty Americal to defend it, why should its European partners trust Paris to risk a nuclear war for their sake?
‘French through and through’
Any French commitment to Europe’s defence would also be vulnerable to the type of radical policy U-turn that the Trump administration has ushered in.
France’s European partners are keenly aware that Macron’s pro-Europe camp leads a minority government, and that two-time presidential runner-up Marine Le Pen is fiercely opposed to any sharing of the country’s nuclear deterrence.
Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party, which has long harboured Russian sympathies, supports France's rearmament but to defend French borders only. Her nationalist camp has described talk of extending France’s nuclear umbrella as a betrayal of its strategic independence.
“Sharing (nuclear) deterrence is equivalent to abolishing it,” Le Pen told French lawmakers on Monday. She argued that “unleashing the nuclear fire cannot be separated from national and popular legitimacy”, which is vested solely in the French president, elected by universal suffrage.
01:24
French government debates extending France's 'nuclear umbrella' to all Europe
© France 24
In his address on Wednesday, Macron reiterated that France’s nuclear deterrent would remain a prerogative of French presidents, describing it as “complete, sovereign, French through and through”.
“The use and production of nuclear weapons is French and will stay French,” added his Defence Minister Sébastien Lecornu, even as he repeated calls for a strategic debate with the rest of Europe.
“While the hand on the button remains that of the head of state, the way in which we contribute to the continent’s global security architecture remains an important debate,” Lecornu said. All European capitals “are going to ask us the question, so we want to be ready to answer”, he added.
Giving ‘concrete form’ to European deterrence
De Neve said European countries would need to “come out into the open” about what they expect from France’s nuclear umbrella – and in what capacity they might contribute.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Brussels, Germany’s outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Europe should not give up on US involvement in nuclear deterrence but rather complement it with European resources. His likely successor Friedrich Merz has already called for a discussion on “nuclear sharing” with France and Britain, saying he feared NATO may not survive “in its current form” beyond June.
The issue of whether EU partners could contribute to the cost of maintaining or upgrading the French deterrence is likely to be on the table.
43:09
Any upgrade of France's nuclear arsenal would be extremely costly and require significant logistical and operational changes at a time when governments are already stretched financially. Analysts have warned it could take France up to a decade to increase its arsenal by only 100 warheads.
The point is not to match the American or Russian arsenals, but rather to ensure France maintains its ability to inflict “unacceptable” damage on any foe, cautioned Maitre.
“Although France has a limited arsenal, it is considered sufficient to cause unacceptable damage to its adversary,” she explained. “It was designed to be able to retaliate under any circumstances with weapons considered indestructible. That’s why there is always at least one (nuclear-armed) submarine on patrol, whose location is kept secret.”
In the short term, a change in France’s nuclear doctrine, which prohibits the stationing of atomic weapons outside France, could give an extended French nuclear umbrella greater credibility. Allies could be integrated into French nuclear exercises and training through the provision of air escorts and by the development of supply and logistical support, aiming to create a degree of interoperability.
France possesses Rafale warplanes capable of carrying nuclear missiles. Their deployment across Europe “would give concrete form to European strategic autonomy”, adds Grémare, sending a signal of “European solidarity that would make Moscow’s calculations more difficult”.
Any upgrade of France's nuclear arsenal would be extremely costly and require significant logistical and operational changes at a time when governments are already stretched financially. Analysts have warned it could take France up to a decade to increase its arsenal by only 100 warheads.
The point is not to match the American or Russian arsenals, but rather to ensure France maintains its ability to inflict “unacceptable” damage on any foe, cautioned Maitre.
“Although France has a limited arsenal, it is considered sufficient to cause unacceptable damage to its adversary,” she explained. “It was designed to be able to retaliate under any circumstances with weapons considered indestructible. That’s why there is always at least one (nuclear-armed) submarine on patrol, whose location is kept secret.”
In the short term, a change in France’s nuclear doctrine, which prohibits the stationing of atomic weapons outside France, could give an extended French nuclear umbrella greater credibility. Allies could be integrated into French nuclear exercises and training through the provision of air escorts and by the development of supply and logistical support, aiming to create a degree of interoperability.
France possesses Rafale warplanes capable of carrying nuclear missiles. Their deployment across Europe “would give concrete form to European strategic autonomy”, adds Grémare, sending a signal of “European solidarity that would make Moscow’s calculations more difficult”.
A signed article by Chinese President Xi Jinping titled "Carrying Forward the Spirit that Guided the Establishment of China-France Diplomatic Relations, Working Together for Global Peace and Development" was published Sunday on French newspaper Le Figaro upon his arrival in Paris for a state visit to France.
Here is the full text of his article.
Carrying Forward the Spirit that Guided the Establishment of China-France Diplomatic Relations, Working Together for Global Peace and Development
Xi Jinping
President of the People's Republic of China
I am delighted to pay my third state visit to France at the invitation of President Emmanuel Macron.
France holds a special fascination for us Chinese. This country has produced a galaxy of philosophers, writers, and artists with global appeal who have inspired all humanity. Over 150 years ago, French nationals helped China found its Fujian Navy Yard and the Fujian Naval Academy. France was also the first country to welcome government-sponsored students from China. A century ago, a number of young Chinese traveled to France for further education. Some of these young patriots went on to make remarkable contribution to the founding and development of New China. France was also the first major western country to enter into formal diplomatic ties with New China.
The year 2024 is of special significance. I will visit France bringing with me three messages from China.
—China will work with France to carry forward the spirit that guided the establishment of their diplomatic ties, build on past achievements and open new vistas for China-France relations.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of China-France relations. Six decades ago, General Charles de Gaulle, with a strategic vision based on the trend of the time, resolved to establish diplomatic relations with New China. It wasn't easy to make this independent decision at the height of the Cold War, but it has proven to be right and foresighted. With the establishment of China-France relations, a bridge of communication between the East and West was built, and the international relations were able to evolve in the direction of dialogue and cooperation.
In these six decades, China-France relations have stayed abreast of the times. Our two countries took the lead in establishing a comprehensive strategic partnership and launching institutional strategic dialogue in China's relations with Western countries. We spearheaded cooperation in aviation and nuclear energy and on third-party markets. We were among the first to mutually open cultural centers and start cultural year activities, providing guidance for mutual learning between civilizations. China-France cooperation contributed to the conclusion of the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, boosting strongly the implementation of the global climate agenda.
History is our best teacher. We live in a world that is far from being tranquil and is once again facing a multitude of risks. China is ready to work with France in the spirit that guided the establishment of our diplomatic ties to forge a stronger comprehensive strategic partnership between our two countries and make new contributions to stronger cooperation of the global community.
—China will open even wider to the world and deepen cooperation with France and other countries.
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. Through 75 years of perseverant hard work, the Chinese people have turned China from an impoverished country into the second largest economy in the world. Several hundred million people in rural areas were lifted out of poverty, a miracle in the history of humanity. The Chinese economy registered 5.2 percent growth in 2023, and is expected to grow by around 5 percent in 2024 with greater progress toward high-quality development. China will remain a source of global growth and create opportunities for all countries.
One thing that has made China's development possible is our firm commitment to opening up. We welcome more quality French farm products and cosmetics to the Chinese market to meet the ever-growing needs of the Chinese people for a better life. We welcome investment by companies from France and other countries to China. To this end, we have fully opened up China's manufacturing sector, and will move faster to expand market access to telecom, medical and other services. We also have a 15-day visa-exemption policy for visitors from many countries including France, and we have taken further measures to facilitate travel and payment by foreigners in China.
While opening up itself, China also encourages Chinese companies to go global. France is advancing re-industrialization based on green innovation, whereas China is accelerating the development of new quality productive forces. Our two countries can deepen cooperation on innovation and jointly promote green development. Some Chinese companies have set up battery plants in France. The Chinese government supports more Chinese companies in investing in France. And we hope that France will ensure that they operate in a fair and equitable business environment.
—China will strengthen communication and coordination with France to uphold world peace and stability.
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. Seven decades ago, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai put forth in full the five principles for the first time —"mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence." Through 70 years, the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence have been widely accepted and recognized by countries across the world. They have become an important norm governing contemporary international relations.
China has faithfully practiced the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. Over the past 70-plus years since its founding, New China never provoked a war or occupied an inch of foreign land. China is the only country around the world that includes in its Constitution the commitment to the path of peaceful development, and China is the only country among the major nuclear-weapon states that is committed to no-first-use of nuclear weapons.
I have proposed in recent years the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative. As part of China's efforts to help improve global governance and resolve tough question regarding human development, the three initiatives have won the support of more than 100 countries and international organizations.
China understands the repercussions of the Ukraine crisis on the people of Europe. China did not start the Ukraine crisis, nor is it a party to or a participant in it. Nonetheless, China has been playing a constructive role in striving for peaceful settlement of the crisis. I have made many appeals, among others, observing the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, respecting sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, and addressing the legitimate security concerns of all sides. I have stressed that nuclear weapons must not be used, and a nuclear war must not be fought. China has delivered to Ukraine many shipments of humanitarian aids, and sent its special representative many times to mediate among the countries concerned. The longer the Ukraine crisis drags on, the greater harm it will do to Europe and the world. China hopes that peace and stability will return to Europe at an early date. We stand ready to work with France and the whole international community to find a reasonable way out of the crisis.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict pulls on our heartstrings as well. The fundamental solution lies in the establishment of an independent State of Palestine. History has repeatedly shown that the recurrent Palestine-Israel problem is rooted essentially in the failure of actual enforcement of relevant UN resolutions, in the continued erosion of the foundation for the two-state solution, and the deviation of the Middle East peace process. China and France have many in common on the Palestine-Israel issue. It is thus critical that we strengthen cooperation and help restore peace in the Middle East.
Confucius observed that "a man of true moral integrity is one who is both friendly but independent, and who does not compromise his principles, and who is independent without any bias or taking sides. How unflinchingly firm he is in his strength!" French writer Romain Rolland said that "it is so much easier to allow oneself to be guided than it is to think for oneself. This abdication is the kernel of the mischief." Both China and France value independence as two major countries. Our interactions in the long course of history have released tremendous energy swaying the trajectory of the world. Now we are standing at another historical starting point. Let us join hands together on this new journey toward greater progress in China-France relations to the benefit of our two countries and the world!