Alert levels among European leaders were raised sharply yesterday by French President Emanuel Macron when he appeared in a televised address to be willing to extend France‘s protection from its nuclear arsenal to its European allies. Summarizing the Russian president’s statements and assessing Moscow’s stance so far on Ukraine, the French president assesses the threat of war from Russia as real, sounding the alarm.

Emmanuel Macron’s offer of a nuclear umbrella is based on the fact that France and Great Britain are the only two countries that possess nuclear weapons on European soil, while both Russia and the United States have similar arsenals. For his part, “our nuclear deterrent protects us – it is comprehensive, sovereign and French all the time,” Macron said, adding that “since 1964, it has played an explicit role in maintaining peace and security in Europe.”

However, he explained that “I have decided to open the strategic debate on protection through deterrence for our allies on the European continent” at a time when the European Union is stepping up negotiations on a common European defence, against the backdrop of the proceedings at today’s extraordinary summit.

Besides, the French president is a pioneer in the push for EU strategic autonomy and less dependence on the US, a view he has already expressed since 2020, when he spoke of a “strategic dialogue” with European partners “on the role played by France’s nuclear deterrent in our collective security”.

But what has happened since then, starting with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has strengthened the arguments of Emmanuel Macron, who is watching with his European counterparts as the US withdraws both from support for Ukraine and from the post-war Euro-Atlantic security framework.

In this context, nuclear deterrence could raise the level of security on the European continent according to the French president, as both the US and Russia invoke their nuclear arsenals every time in times of escalating tensions between them. Especially when, for the French president, the new geopolitical scene is made up of an aggressive Russia and the US playing a controversial role. In this light, for Paris, the fact that Moscow spends 40% of its budget on military spending should not go unanswered, considering that its expansionist ambitions have not been satisfied by the invasion of Ukraine.

Instead, “Russia has become a threat to France and Europe for years to come,” the French president said, adding that “I want to believe that the United States will remain by our side, but we must be ready if that were no longer the case.”

Military summit

In light of the new circumstances, Emmanuel Macron also announced that France will convene a meeting of European military chiefs in Paris next week to discuss the possible deployment of peacekeeping troops in Ukraine after the war ends, commenting that “the future of Europe should not be decided in Washington or Moscow.”

Nuclear supporters on the rise

The new, geopolitical situation, however, is not only putting French President Emmanuel Macron on alert, but also Germany. Indeed, the Elysee tenant positioned his proposal to extend nuclear deterrence at the level of a response to “the historic call of Germany’s future chancellor”, “taking a picture” of Friedrich Merz, the centre-right politician who is the favourite to become Germany’s chancellor.

Notably, Mr. Murch said last month that German authorities should talk to their French and British counterparts about expanding their nuclear umbrellas.

“We have a shield. They don’t,” Emmanuel Macron remarked of France’s European allies in an interview with Le Parisien last week. “And they can no longer depend on the American nuclear deterrent. We need a strategic dialogue with those who don’t have it, and that would make France stronger,” the French president added.

Britain

At the same time, the fact that the French President’s statements came just hours before the start of the debate on European defense is not a coincidence, at a time when the possibility of extending the nuclear umbrella, which has been put up for discussion in Great Britain, is also being discussed. According to Emmanuel Macron, France could cooperate with other countries on joint deterrence exercises, without for the moment outlining the exact framework and the form of cooperation.

However, the extension of France’s nuclear umbrella to its allies within the EU has been met with a backlash from Macron’s political opponents, with Marine Le Pen stating that Macron “undermines our deterrence model”, while Laurent Vaquier, an MP from the conservative Les Républicains party, commented that “you don’t share the nuclear button”.

For his part, the French President made it clear that France will firmly maintain control of its nuclear weapons and any decision to use them, as “our nuclear deterrent is French and will remain so,” as Sebastien Lecornoux, France’s defence minister, asserted last week. But “we have to answer the questions of our European partners about what our deterrent is, what it can mean for them and what it will remain,”
he concluded.