French President Macron to visit top-secret sub base
They lurk in the oceans, a last resort to pulverize attackers with nuclear fire should France’s commander in chief ever make that terrible call. French President Emmanuel Macron, the person with the power to unleash France’s nuclear arsenal, will on Monday update French thinking on the potential use of warheads carried on submarines and planes, if it ever came to that.
This in the context of concerns in Europe that Russian war-making could spread beyond Ukraine, and uncertainty about US President Donald Trump ‘s steadfastness as an ally. For decades, Europe has lived under a protective umbrella of US nuclear weapons, stationed on the continent since the mid-1950s to deter the former Soviet Union and now Russia. Lately, however, some European politicians and defense analysts are questioning whether Washington can still be relied upon to use such force if needed.
As the only nuclear-armed member of the 27-nation European Union, the questions are particularly pertinent for France. Possible revisions to France’s nuclear deterrence policy, sure to be carefully calibrated and scrutinised by allies and potential enemies alike, could be among the most consequential decisions that Macron makes in his remaining 14 months as president, before elections to choose his successor in 2027.
That Macron feels a need to bare France’s nuclear teeth, in what will be the commander in chief’s second keynote speech laying out the country’s deterrence posture since his election in 2017, speaks to his concerns, voiced multiple times, about geopolitical and defense-technology shifts that threaten the security of France and its allies. Those voicing doubts about Washington’s reliability include Rasmus Jarlov, chair of the Danish parliament’s Defense Committee.
“If things got really serious, I very much doubt that Trump would risk American cities to protect European cities,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We don’t know but it seems very risky to rely on the American protection.” He and others are turning to France for reassurance. In the longer term, Jarlov argues that other European nations also need to arm themselves with nuclear weapons - an almost unfathomable prospect when U.S. protection seemed absolute in European minds.
