In early March, at France’s nuclear submarine base in Brittany, Emmanuel Macron delivered perhaps the most significant speech on nuclear policy by any Western leader since the end of the cold war. After decades of flirting with the notion, a French president has finally made the move and offered their country’s nuclear umbrella to interested European allies. In view at last is that keystone of an autonomous European defence: an independent nuclear deterrent.
Nuclear deterrence is ultimately about confidence. An effective umbrella requires its beneficiaries to trust that their guarantor would be ready to run the appalling risks of resorting to nuclear use on their behalf. Equally, they need to believe the man in the Kremlin also sees the nuclear threat as sufficiently real to curb his appetite for risk-taking. That was the basis on which the US nuclear guarantee kept the peace in Europe throughout the cold war. Today, when no one can count on the US president for anything and the revanchist mission of his Russian counterpart is all too obvious, the question becomes whether France can offer an equally compelling guarantee.
There are two main aspects to this: the capacity, and the commitment, of the guarantor.
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