France’s Nuclear Deterrent and Europe’s Shifting Security Future

Soul-searching in the European capitals has only deepened since the start of Trump’s second presidency, with European Union (EU) members now questioning whether Washington’s once-ironclad security guarantees will endure. This bewilderment when facing a potential US disengagement in the Old Continent was evidently best captured during Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Forum in February 2025.

In light of the recent Munich episode, several EU member states have started to openly express their interest in France's nuclear deterrent, which remains the EU's only one since Brexit. This development is seen as a way to partially address Europe's security needs, particularly by Poland and Germany. Taking up on these initiatives, President Macron spoke of a “European dimension” of France’s deterrent during an interview for a French channel in May 2025.

Behind the high-pitched rhetoric, the newfound interest in a “Europeanisation” of the French deterrent is nothing if not. However fraught and sensitive the concept might be, exploring its historical, political, and operational ramifications is imperative.

France’s “Vital Interests” Debate

If Charles de Gaulle was the Godfather during the 1960s of a French sovereign and national nuclear deterrent, his successors were more open to the idea of having the French force de frappe, defending vital interests that extended beyond the Hexagon. This subtle and far-reaching shift was illustrated in the 1972 White Paper on defence. However, it failed to unpack what constituted these vital interests, paving the way for a carefully crafted strategic ambiguity in this domain, leaving little room for manoeuvre and strategic signalling.

With the peace dividends coming out of the fall of the erstwhile Soviet Union and the “end of History” mantra gaining traction throughout the 1990s, these political openings remained a dead-end, buried under the ever-decreasing military budgets of France and its European allies.

The end of the Cold War did not put to rest the doctrinal debates, with former President Mitterrand even pushing the genie out of the bottle in 1992 by hinting at the possibility of a “European nuclear doctrine”. His successor, Jacques Chirac, furthered this stance by announcing a concerted deterrence with European allies, notably the United Kingdom (UK).

With the peace dividends coming out of the fall of the erstwhile Soviet Union and the “end of History” mantra gaining traction throughout the 1990s, these political openings remained a dead-end, buried under the ever-decreasing military budgets of France and its European allies^[i]. Furthermore, the threats from the East waned and were poised to be replaced by the “Global War on Terror”.

These new realities prompted the adoption of a doctrinal shift, which, nevertheless, followed progressively. First, the concept of “Final warning” (Ultime avertissement) that had its raison d’être against the massive conventional forces of the Warsaw Pact was now to be used as an alternative to the “all or nothing” dilemma of nuke, providing the President a way to “reestablish” a deterrent by means of a unique strike^[ii].

Second, the notion of “sufficiency” of the French deterrent was now to be defined more narrowly and strictly, in line with the decreasing number of warheads, which almost halved from a peak of 550 in 1992 to less than 300 during the late 2000s, a figure that has held steady since. Additionally, this “strict sufficiency” aligns with France’s compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), signed in 1992. As part of this commitment, the country equally stopped producing fissile material for its weapons^[iii].

The national and sovereign decision-making remains intangible even today, in the hands of the President as Commander-in-Chief of the nuclear strike forces. Similarly, the French doctrine does not permit nuclear warfighting, remaining purely defensive. There is no conventional-nuclear continuum on the battlefield, and the nuclear domain is intrinsically of a different and unique nature.

This echoes the Indian nuclear doctrine as well, which is purely defensive – through its ‘No First Use’ pledge – and whose ‘minimum credible deterrent’ could mirror France’s ‘strict sufficiency’.

Thus, the only doctrinal ‘tweaking’ allowed in this tightly knit and highly sensitive environment falls on the ever-meandering definition of France’s vital interests. This return of war on the continent in the 2010s would put these seemingly expert-driven debates under the political and public spotlight.

Russia’s War and Renewed Nuclear Debate

The call to revamp France’s stance and, more broadly, Europe’s nuclear dilemma resurfaced naturally in 2014 after the Russian annexation of Crimea and even more after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Nonetheless, President Emmanuel Macron did not wait until 2022 to update France’s “nuclear grammar”. In 2020, while stating his doctrine on deterrence, he explicitly referred to a European dimension of France’s vital interests, which was reiterated during Macron’s visit to Sweden in January 2024.

The French deterrent will differ from the US nuclear umbrella currently protecting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies in Europe.

This year has seen a deeper inflexion and acceleration, both in discourse and strategic thinking about the “Europeaniation” of the French deterrent and with it, the concrete meaning such endeavours are poised to entail. Macron himself, very much aware that its European allies are demanding transparency and clarifications as to what a “French deterrent with European characteristics” would mean, announced earlier this month that he will clarify France’s posture on the matter in 2026. It is possible to outline what Europeanisation would involve for France and its allies, while also dispelling some common myths. Drawing on the comprehensive research by Heloise Fayet and Emmanuelle Maitre on this subject, one can begin to visualise the emerging deterrence relationship between France and its EU partners.

A highly likely scenario is that the French deterrent will differ from the US nuclear umbrella currently protecting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies in Europe. France’s ‘strict sufficiency’ ensures that its nuclear arsenal is dimensioned with a limited number of warheads (compared to the US’s roughly 1,400 strategic warheads on US soil and upwards of 100 B-61 gravity bombs stored in European countries) that cater to the country’s defence architecture.

Indeed, this “extended deterrence” scenario would involve dramatically ramping up France's arsenal amidst budgetary constraints, and the onus now being on the modernisation of the dyad^[iv], which appears unlikely in the near future. Moreover, France would then be foregoing its commitment under the NPT, with a gradual reduction of the number of warheads to around 300 being a cornerstone of its disarmament policy. This could also involve stationing nuclear weapons in partners countries, leaving thus open the question of the decision-making for an eventual strike, and potentially altering the French sovereign command and control.

If this maximalist approach to extended deterrence with French characteristics seems impractical, it still allows for ample experimentation without falling into the traps of a purely “Gaullist” and Franco-centric strategy.

First, as a demonstration of the seriousness and credibility of its deterrent, France could systematise allied and partner participation in its nuclear air raid “Poker”^[v]  - which already happened in 2022 with an Italian tanker. Going deeper, one might envision the possibility of the “Europeanisation” of a strategic air squadron, with European pilots being trained by their French counterparts, the Forces Aériennes Stratégiques (Strategic Air Command Forces) or FAS.

Second, this strategic nuclear signalling cannot come without conventional reassurances, as it demonstrates France’s concrete engagement with its European allies in the Eastern flank, while dispelling the notion that there can be something akin to the US extended deterrence. This is already being implemented in Estonia, with a French army contingent deployed within the multinational battle group as part of NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence, as well as in Romania, where France has led the multinational Eagle battalion since February 2022. Lastly and more symbolically, since September 2024, France has deployed three Rafale aircraft from its strategic squadron in Poland as part of operation Eastern Sentry, following the Russian drone incursions.

Lastly, on the diplomatic and outreach front, France could accelerate nuclear strategic dialogues with its partners to facilitate information exchange. It could also increase visits of delegations to France’s nuclear sites and command centres—something already being conducted at a think-tank level. At the multilateral front, France could rejoin the NATO nuclear planning group to solidify its commitment to the nuclear nature of the deterrent. France has recently demonstrated an unprecedented interest in nuclear coordination, highlighted by the July 2025 Northwood declaration between Paris and London, which for the first time mentioned the potential for coordination between their nuclear forces.

For the international community, the lessons to be drawn from this hybrid and evolving French model of deterrence are evident. They show that building a nuclear umbrella on the US model is out of reach for the rest of the nuclear-weapon states and possessors, barring a radical rethinking of their posture and recalibration of their arsenal^[vi]. Nonetheless, that leaves plenty of room for strategic manoeuvring and a recalibration of posture. This could be enough to trigger a sobering debate among West Asian countries left in the lurch after the recent and much-discussed Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement signed between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, where the nuclear dimension appears implicit while hypothetical.

Guillaume Gandelin is a Visiting Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme, Observer Research Foundation.

^[i] With France’s military expenditures going from 3% of the GDP in the late 1980’s to 2% a decade later

^[ii] It is thought but not inked that this final warning, due to its nature, would be delivered by the air based component of the deterrent, with the land based strategic and tactical component withdrawn and dismantled since the mid 1990’s. Nonetheless, such a strike could theoretically come from the sea-based SSBN as well.

^[iii] Plutonium in 1992 and Highly Enriched Unranium (HEU) in 1996

^[iv] ASN4G missile for the air component and the SSBN 3G for the sea-based deterrent

^[v] As it happened in 2022 with the participation of an Italian tanker during the exercise.

^[vi] The only exception here being Russia with its large arsenal and quasi extended deterrence in the case of Belarus.

• International Affairs
• Nuclear Security
• European Union
• USA and Canada
• eu us relations under trump
• european nuclear policy
• french military expenditure
• french nuclear strategy
• nato nuclear planning group
• us nuclear umbrella
• us nuclear umbrella countries

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