Yesterday afternoon, during a visit to the Île Longue nuclear submarine base in Brittany, French President Emmanuel Macron delivered one of the most significant security-related speeches in recent European history, the essential content of which was contained in his claim that “to be free…one must be feared, and to be feared, one must be powerful”.
What did he mean by that? That France is proud of its nuclear capabilities, and is planning on investing much more in them as a result of the turbulent times through which we’re living:
As per the official transcript of the French president’s speech:
“The past six years have weighed like decades for France and for Europe. And the last few months like years. Our competitors have evolved, as have our partners. The world is becoming more hardened, and recent events have demonstrated this once again. It is therefore with great gravity that I come today to announce to the Nation an evolution commensurate with our national and European challenges. We must strengthen our nuclear deterrence in the face of the combination of threats and we must think about our deterrence strategy in the depth of the European continent, in full respect of our sovereignty, with the progressive implementation of what I would call advanced deterrence.”
A “new stage” in French deterrence, advanced deterrence will in essence involve greater proactivity on France’s part on the nuclear front, and deeper cooperation with France’s allies. “Contacts” have already been made in relation to this with an initial group of eight countries (UK, Germany, Poland, Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, Denmark), who will have the opportunity to participate in deterrence exercises initially.
According to President Macron, this could broaden out to include “signaling, including beyond our immediate borders”; the conventional participation of allied forces in French nuclear activities; and the deployment of “strategic force elements to our allies”.
Mr Macron has made clear that he doesn’t intend to replace American nuclear support, or the NATO nuclear framework, but his comments signal an era of enhanced European cooperation and focus on the development of the continent’s nuclear deterrence – an era, as the French president made clear, that France intends to lead:
“Just as our strategic submarines naturally disperse throughout the oceans, guaranteeing a continuous strike capability, our strategic air forces will be able to spread deep into the European continent. This dispersal across European territory, like an archipelago of forces, will complicate our adversaries’ calculations and give this advanced deterrence considerable value for us. It will strengthen our defense by giving it scope and offering it a new strategic depth, consistent with the security challenges in Europe.
“Its value will, I believe, also be very strong for the partners who adopt this approach with us, and whose territories will gain a strong link with our deterrent.”
Despite the openness, Mr Macron reassured French listeners that “sole responsibility” for the crossing of the nuclear threshold would remain with France, and more specifically with its president, and would not be delegated to allies.
Domestically, Mr Macron committed to a range of nuclear arsenal enhancements, including an increase in the number of nuclear warheads France possesses, a figure that will no longer be publicly disclosed. The name of France’s next nuclear class submarine was revealed (L’Invincible), which is due to launch in 2036, while upgrades to nuclear missiles across the various French forces are to be carried out.
“Should we have to use our arsenal, no state, however powerful, could avoid it. None, however vast, could recover,” Mr Macron said, adding that “a single one of our submarines, such as the one behind me, carries a strike power equivalent to the sum of all the bombs dropped on Europe during the Second World War.
“It is nearly a thousand times the power of the first nuclear bombs,” he said.
The French president drew his speech to a close with the statement that over and above upgrading nuclear arsenals, European “logic that needs to change”, criticising a tendency to outsource security to “third parties”.
“Let’s be clear, that was the European security architecture: agreements dating back to the Cold War period, negotiated by others, even when they directly concerned us, and denounced by the very people who had signed them without any consultation, even if they were our allies.
“Our era calls for a different approach. We must rebuild a body of rules, but one that, as far as we are concerned, is based on our security interests and those of our continent.”