Advocates of nuclear disarmament are regularly dismissed by the champions of nuclear deterrence as naïve and unrealistic, utopian or even irresponsible. Yet this ‘doctrine’ of deterrence, regarded by France as the ‘cornerstone’ of its national security, is based on quasi-religious beliefs, a theory that cannot be proven, risky gambles and fragile assumptions. So much so that one might legitimately ask which side the ‘Care Bears’ are on.
By Marc Finaud, Vice-President of Initiatives for Nuclear Disarmament (IDN)
Idealists and realists
It was Hubert Védrine, François Mitterrand’s former Foreign Minister, who repeatedly coined the phrase: ‘Europeans are a sort of Care Bears who don’t realise they’re living in Jurassic Park’. He applies this reference to the cartoon for well-behaved children not only to what he regards as weakness or idealism in the face of predatory states driven by the will to power, but also to those who advocate multilateral cooperation in accordance with international law with a view to reducing tensions and promoting disarmament as a factor for peace. He therefore fully subscribes to the idea that only nuclear weapons are capable of protecting France against any aggression.
He is, of course, neither the only one nor the first to downplay the importance of international norms – such as those set out in the UN Charter or international humanitarian law – in the face of competition between major powers, adopting a ‘realist’ or ‘realpolitik’ approach. Thus, after the First World War, the French nationalist right-wing dismissed as ‘bleating pacifism’ the policy embodied by Aristide Briand, who was behind the Locarno Agreements (1925) aimed at reintegrating Germany into the European diplomatic arena, the Briand–Kellogg Pact (1928), which proclaimed the ‘outlawing of war’, and the European Union project (1929). This was despite the fact that Briand had been a war leader during the First World War and had voted in favour of the funding essential for national defence.
Later, during the Cold War, President Mitterrand, faced with crowds demonstrating against the deployment of new American missiles in Europe, famously declared: ‘The missiles are in the East, the pacifists in the West!’. Nevertheless, a decade later, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, the Socialist President, having recognised the changed circumstances, launched an ambitious disarmament plan, including, in particular, accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a halt to nuclear testing, without, however, renouncing nuclear deterrence.
Nuclear Deterrence on Shaky Ground
As philosopher Jean-Pierre Dupuy points out,
‘[i]f there has never been a nuclear war to date, nuclear deterrence has had little to do with it. (…) It is sheer luck that, during the Cold War and since then, whilst we have come within a hair’s breadth of the worst some thirty times, it has not happened. (…) [T]his constant flirtation with the abyss has, to a greater or lesser extent, helped to give the protagonists in this drama the wisdom needed to avert disaster. (…) Another reason not to credit nuclear deterrence with having prevented nuclear war is that deterrence played a very minor role in the nuclear policies pursued by the United States, the Soviet Union and Russia alike. ’
Indeed, as demonstrated by Daniel Ellsberg, the former US Cold War planner and whistleblower behind the ‘Pentagon Papers’, quoted by Jean-Pierre Dupuy, the major powers based their strategy not on the restraint inherent in deterrence, but on the capacity for a first strike to neutralise the enemy’s retaliation capacity. However, in one of his most recent interviews, Ellsberg spoke of the uncertainty felt by many US military personnel regarding the order to retaliate in the event of an attack, which may never reach them. This paralysis, of which the enemy is aware, he concludes, renders deterrence ineffective.
All in all, nuclear deterrence – which aims to persuade a potential aggressor to renounce any attack for fear of devastating nuclear retaliation – amounts to delegating to one’s adversary the strategic decision regarding one’s own security. And this, paradoxically, is done in the name of the pursuit of national independence, the principal motivation invoked by France since the time of General de Gaulle.
Such dependence on a weapon intended to terrorise the enemy, but which also potentially threatens one’s own population with annihilation, presupposes blind trust in the rationality of the adversary, whom one hopes – without any guarantee – will refrain from any attack. Yet numerous historical examples show that this rationality may be lacking, or that nuclear weapons do not always act as a deterrent.
Between nuclear powers, deterrence has not prevented direct conflicts (such as the Sino-Soviet border conflict of 1969 or the clashes between India and Pakistan in 1999, 2019 or 2025), nor has it prevented indirect conflicts involving third countries or proxy wars (such as the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, the Vietnam War from 1955 to 1975, the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973, and the Syrian Civil War from 2011 to 2025, etc.). Furthermore, non-nuclear states, undeterred by the concept of deterrence, have not hesitated to launch attacks against nuclear powers: North Vietnam against the United States, and Egypt and Syria against Israel in 1973, Argentina against the United Kingdom in 1982, and more recently Iran in retaliation against US and Israeli strikes, or Ukraine in response to Russia’s invasion, despite Russian threats to use nuclear weapons.
Some experts, including former US deterrence policy officials such as Rose Gottemoeller, former NATO Assistant Secretary-General and negotiator of the US-Russian New START agreements, now acknowledge this quite plainly: ‘nuclear deterrence does not work’ and ‘nuclear weapons may prove powerless in the face of sustained conventional or hybrid attacks’.
Security Doctrine or Religious Belief?
Absolute faith in nuclear deterrence – described by France as the ‘cornerstone of its security’ – can easily be compared to a religious belief that brands any opponent or sceptic a ‘renegade’ or even a traitor. As Colonel Jean-Luc Lefebvre pointed out in his op-ed for IDN,
‘nuclear deterrence has its own clergy! There are the insiders – the military, weapons engineers, civilian engineers and technicians working on weapons and delivery systems – and, above all, members of the Directorate for Military Affairs at the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA/DAM), for whom ‘the bomb’ is their raison d’être. This entire clergy has its own rites, taking particular care to ensure the gradual education of new members. (…) At the head of this clergy stands the President of the Republic, who alone holds the power of life and death over millions of human beings! The current High Priest delivered his final sermon, in his own words, in ‘this cathedral of our sovereignty’ which houses the nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines.’
Ultimately, as history has shown, nuclear deterrence is not only a risky gamble on the enemy’s behaviour, but also an absolute belief in luck, which has, so far, made it possible to avoid catastrophe and the end of humanity. Yet, as Professor Benoît Pelopidas from Sciences Po reminds us, one cannot build a credible defence on the hope that luck will continue to favour us.
The Inherent Contradiction in Deterrence
The French ‘doctrine’ in this instance is characterised by a fundamental contradiction:
On the one hand, the nuclear weapon is officially regarded as the ultimate guarantee of national security. The term ‘guarantee’ features in numerous French presidential speeches: according to Jacques Chirac in 2001, ‘[o]n its own, the deterrent force guarantees France against the possible use of weapons of mass destruction whatever their nature.’ According to Emmanuel Macron in 2020, ‘our nuclear deterrent remains, as a last resort, the cornerstone of our security and the guarantee of our vital interests. Today, as in the past, it guarantees our independence and our freedom of judgement, decision-making and action.’
At the same time, as clearly stated in every presidential address since 1994, the possibility of deterrence failing is not only envisaged, but France promises its adversary—who has not been deterred—a ‘final warning’ consisting, according to President Macron in 2026, of a ‘single, non-renewable nuclear warning (…) always decided, at France’s sole discretion, to signify very concretely that the nature of the conflict has just changed and that France intends, by this means, to preserve a final chance to re-establish deterrence.’ As the expert Yannick Princé explains, ‘[i]t would involve a single launch, carried out either by a Rafale or by a SSBN (nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine), bearing in mind that the number of nuclear warheads in the SSBNs’ M51 missiles can be adjusted. There are generally six to ten warheads in each of the sixteen missiles, but there is probably one with a single warhead, dedicated to this final warning strike.’
The yield of an airborne nuclear warhead (TNA) that would be carried by a Rafale is estimated at 300 kt (20 times that of the Hiroshima bomb) and that of a Submarine-Launched Nuclear Warhead (SLNW) fired from a SSBN is estimated at between 100 kt and 150 kt (7 to 10 times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb). It is therefore difficult to see how such a nuclear strike could be confined to ‘military interests’ (the official target), when a 300 kt nuclear weapon dropped on Beijing would instantly cause more than 700,000 deaths and over two million injuries. This, moreover, is the only certainty regarding nuclear weapons that is borne out by history: their use would result in catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences.
Under these circumstances, it is even harder to imagine that such a nuclear strike would succeed in ‘restoring deterrence’ and would not trigger a nuclear retaliation, setting in motion an escalation towards all-out nuclear war and the annihilation of France – a scenario envisaged by former President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in his memoirs as the fundamental reason why he had ruled out ‘pressing the button’.
So who, then, are the naïve, the irresponsible, the ‘Care Bears’? Those who gamble away France’s security and future in a game of bluff or Russian roulette, or those who advocate interim measures to reduce the risk of the use – whether intentional or not – of nuclear weapons and their gradual, negotiated, and verifiable elimination?
