Why Europe can’t rely on French nuclear umbrella alone

www.ft.com

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Why Europe can’t rely on French nuclear umbrella alone

www.ft.com

misk@sopuli.xyz to

Europe@feddit.orgEnglish · 22 hours ago

France’s president opens debate over using country’s atomic arsenal as a deterrent against Russia if US scales back its presence

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.03.18-050128/https://www.ft.com/content/7fed8f2b-98c7-43c6-88b3-d66be449bfac

Macron has repeatedly stressed that a French president would always have ultimate power to decide whether to use the bomb — the same applies to Britain and the US within Nato.

Together, British and French nuclear capabilities would at least make Moscow think twice about attacking, said a senior western official.

However, “what really influences Russian decision-making is the scale of US deterrence”, he said. Europe would need at least a decade of spending at around 6-7 per cent of GDP if it wanted to emulate that and acquire another 1,000 warheads, he added.

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14 hours ago
They have a pretty famous strategic use, actually. To be fair, it dovetails heavily with domestic politics, but MAD is still strategy.

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