In a televised speech on March 5, President Emmanuel Macron said France is willing to consider sharing the protection of its nuclear weapons with other European nations who face a threat from Moscow.
European leaders are scrambling to bolster defense spending and capabilities, as they take more seriously the possibility of a world without as much U.S. support—perhaps even without the protection of its thousands of nuclear warheads.
Despite appearances, however, France may not be the country that is really shifting its strategy. Rather Germany, Poland, and other nations in central and eastern Europe are starting to think seriously about whose nuclear umbrella they can shelter under—and pondering what has been a long-standing French offer.
With Russia having almost 20 times as many nuclear warheads as France, can Paris offer a meaningful deterrent to Moscow? How could it work in practice? Could the answer be that the European Union has its own warheads?
“A full withdrawal by the United States would mean the end of NATO and I don’t think we are there yet,” Attila Demko, a security policy expert from Hungary, told The Epoch Times.
He said some European leaders had been running around like “headless chickens” since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January and demanded increased military spending by Europe while distancing himself from Kyiv and supporting efforts to end the conflict with Russia.
Emmanuel Dupuy, president of the Institute for European Perspective and Security Studies, a think tank based in Paris, said France has offered its nuclear umbrella to the rest of Europe since the 1960s.
“There’s really nothing new to it. What is new is based on the fact that a certain number of countries, who were reluctant to that have now agreed to speak about it,” Dupuy told The Epoch Times.
“France is not shifting or changing its nuclear deterrence strategy.”
He said countries such as Germany and Poland are now more open to the idea of the French nuclear umbrella, as a result of the change of position by the United States.
On March 5, Macron said he had decided “to open the strategic debate on the protection of our allies on the European continent by our [nuclear] deterrent.”
“Our nuclear deterrent protects us. It’s complete, sovereign, French through and through. But, responding to the historic call of the future German Chancellor, I have decided to open the strategic debate on the protection of our allies on the European continent through our deterrence,” he added.
Last month, Germany’s election winner and likely future chancellor Friedrich Merz called for a discussion on “nuclear sharing” with France.
Poland and two of the Baltic states welcomed Macron’s speech.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during a news conference in Moscow on March 6 that Macron’s comments were a “threat” against Russia.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Macron’s speech was “extremely confrontational.”
France is the only nuclear power in the European Union, following Britain’s departure from the bloc in 2021.
Opposition to Sharing Nuclear
Some opposition politicians in France have objected to Macron’s position.
France has had a long and complex relationship with nuclear weapons.
The following year France’s President Charles de Gaulle, hosted U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Paris.
According to the State Department minutes, it was not De Gaulle’s “impression that the United States would never use nuclear weapons but only that the United States would use nuclear weapons in the sole case where it felt its territory directly threatened.
“The same thing in his opinion applies to the Soviets and to France when France has nuclear weapons.”
Four years later, France had developed an independent nuclear deterrent and has had one ever since.
On March 5, Macron said: “Our nuclear deterrence protects us. It is French from A to Z. It has been in place ever since 1964 and it has always played an essential role in ensuring peace and security in Europe.”
Macron said any decision to use France’s nuclear weapons would remain only in the hands of the French president.
In 1966, De Gaulle withdrew France from NATO’s military command structure and the country rejoined in 2009.
Dupuy said Macron made a speech in Nov. 2022 in which he said the French nuclear deterrence had not changed since it was first launched.
“The only thing that is changing is the fact that the French strategic interest and the European strategic interest may [now] be the same,” Dupuy added.
Demko said some of the European responses to Trump’s statements were “outlandish” and he said there was no way France, even with the support of Britain, could replace the U.S. nuclear umbrella.
The Federation of American Scientists estimates that Russia 1,710 deployed nuclear warheads. Including retired and stockpiled warheads, it has a total of 5,449 nuclear warheads, and Demko said some of these were on submarines, some on planes and others in ground silos.
The United States has around 5,277, of which 1,670 are deployed nuclear warheads.
In comparison, France has 290 and Britain has 225 deployed nuclear warheads.
“Russia could fully destroy the United Kingdom and France, while France and the UK are not able to fully destroy Russia,” Demko said.
“Of course, it could make a very big impact on Russia, but it’s not ... like the United States and Russia are in parity in a mutually assured destruction.”
However, Dupuy said it doesn’t matter that France doesn’t have parity with Russia in nuclear warheads.
The Narva Question
Ever since Estonia joined NATO in 2004, defense strategists have posed the question of whether the United States would go to war, or fire nuclear missiles, to defend the town of Narva, which has a large ethnic Russian community.“But we can ask the same question, would the United Kingdom and France risk nuclear war for Narva? This is the issue with much smaller nuclear forces, ”Demko said.
Demko said the French were trying to play “this influence game.”
“Honestly, anybody who seriously thinks that France will trade Paris for Narva. No, I don’t believe it,” he said.
“We are in a dangerous world. But the question is, if you don’t trust Mr. Trump to deliver, can we in central and eastern Europe fully trust the UK and France, with much smaller forces and much more to risk?”
Demko said there are still many unanswered questions.
“Who makes the decision to deploy if there is a Russian aggression, who makes the decision to answer with nuclear force? France? What is the chain of command? Who is the final decision maker?”
EU Nuclear Deterrent
He said an EU nuclear deterrent would make it harder for Moscow to concentrate political or economic pressure.“There should be an uncertainty in the mind of Russians, not knowing who is making the final decision, because if they know it’s France and the UK, then it makes their life easier,” Demko said.
“If you want to be serious about this, to have a real deterrence against Russia, we have to have a much larger nuclear force than the two European powers have.”
Demko said the French hold a “weak hand.”
“I don’t believe that the United States will fully disengage from Europe. It’s a very low probability scenario, but it would be a very high impact scenario,” he said.
“Europe has to wake up in terms of military spending. So I think the messaging is right from the Trump administration that we have to spend more in Europe, and we have to do much more for our security and don’t take the U.S. taxpayer for granted.”
