22 January 2006
France: Another Nuclear "Rogue State"
By Gwynne Dyer
"The leaders of states who use terrorist methods against us, as
well as those who consider using...weapons of mass destruction, must
understand that they would expose themselves to a firm and appropriate
response on our part. This response could be a conventional one. It might
also be of a different kind."
On 19 January, President Jacques Chirac announced a major change in
French nuclear strategy while visiting Ile Longue, the country's main
nuclear submarine base. Speaking on the missile-firing submarine Le
Vigilant, he said that in future France would consider using nuclear
weapons against any country that supported a major terrorist attack against
it. But he did promise that he'd only nuke it a little bit: "We should not
have to choose between inaction and obliteration....The flexibility and
reactivity of our strategic (nuclear) forces should allow us to respond
against its power centres, against its capacity to act."
Oh, good. For a minute there it sounded as if Chirac was planning
to obliterate any county that he suspected of sponsoring a terrorist attack
against France, but no. He would only nuke their "power centres" and their
"capacity to act."
What does that mean in practice? Well, it seems to mean that if
terrorists flew a hijacked plane into a tall building in Paris and Chirac
suspected that Iran was behind it, for example, he would only nuke the
prime minister's office, the defence ministry and the intelligence
headquarters in Tehran, and maybe three or four key military facilities
around the country. With luck, only a few million Iranians would die.
Chirac is so concerned about sparing innocent lives that he has
even ordered France's missiles to be modified for selective strikes that
don't obliterate whole countries. "All our nuclear forces have been
reconfigured accordingly. To this end, the number of warheads has been
reduced on some missiles on our submarines," he said.
During the Cold War, every one of the sixteen missiles on each
French submarine had six nuclear warheads, because France wanted to be able
to kill fifty or a hundred million Russians if the Soviet Union ever
invaded Western Europe. (It was called "deterrence.") But now, Chirac
assures us, a few of the missiles on each French submarine carry only two
or three few warheads, adjusted to cause smaller nuclear explosions, in
case he wants to kill foreigners in (relatively) smaller numbers.
What on earth has incited Chirac to start talking like this only
months before he leaves office? Partly, one suspects, it is just his
frustration at no longer being in the limelight, but he also has a more
serious goal: to secure the future of France's "force de frappe" (nuclear
striking force) long after he has left office. Like its creator, Charles de
Gaulle, he believes that it is an essential element of France's
independence and its ticket to all the high tables of the planet.
Even among Chirac's own right-wing colleagues there is now open
debate about the desirability of maintaining France's nuclear striking
force forever. After all, the Soviet Union, the enemy it was built to
deter, has been gone for fifteen years now, and there is not a single
nuclear-weapons power in the world that sees France as a potential enemy.
It costs 3 billion euros ($2 billion) a year just to maintain the country's
nuclear striking force, and one day in the not too distant future it will
cost a great deal more to modernise it. Why don't we just scrap it?
Faced with a similar dilemma on the other side of the Channel, Tony
Blair's government simply argues that Britain must keep its nuclear weapons
because -- well, because who knows what the world will be like twenty years
from now? In Cartesian France, however, you are expected to make a more
coherent argument than that, so Chirac is doing the best he can.
Chirac's basic problem is that France has no real, nuclear-armed
enemy to deter with its nukes any more. His solution is to extend the
target list to include non-nuclear enemies -- "terrorist-supporting
states," for example -- and justify their retention that way.
Chirac's new position is not unique. The United States retracted
its old half-promise not to use nukes against non-nuclear-weapons states
years ago, and the Bush administration has been pressing for the
development of a new generation of "mini-nukes" to do exactly what Chirac
suggests at a somewhat lower cost in innocent lives).
Bush believed that Saddam Hussein supported the 9/11 terrorist
attacks against the United States (or at least he said he did), and
existing US doctrine would have allowed him to use those nukes in response.
He invaded instead because the neo-conservatives who run US foreign policy
had been seeking a pretext to do exactly that for years, but another time
might be different. So why shouldn't Chirac adopt the same doctrine?
Because to demand that countries outside the nuclear weapons club
renounce any ambitions to get them, while the existing members expand their
nuclear target lists to include countries that don't have them, is worse
than hypocritical. It is self-defeating. After this, how can France demand
with a straight face that Iran forego nuclear weapons? The world has got
used to this sort of behaviour from the sole superpower, but who gave
Chirac permission to behave like an American president?
France: Another Nuclear "Rogue State"
By Gwynne Dyer
"The leaders of states who use terrorist methods against us, as
well as those who consider using...weapons of mass destruction, must
understand that they would expose themselves to a firm and appropriate
response on our part. This response could be a conventional one. It might
also be of a different kind."
On 19 January, President Jacques Chirac announced a major change in
French nuclear strategy while visiting Ile Longue, the country's main
nuclear submarine base. Speaking on the missile-firing submarine Le
Vigilant, he said that in future France would consider using nuclear
weapons against any country that supported a major terrorist attack against
it. But he did promise that he'd only nuke it a little bit: "We should not
have to choose between inaction and obliteration....The flexibility and
reactivity of our strategic (nuclear) forces should allow us to respond
against its power centres, against its capacity to act."
Oh, good. For a minute there it sounded as if Chirac was planning
to obliterate any county that he suspected of sponsoring a terrorist attack
against France, but no. He would only nuke their "power centres" and their
"capacity to act."
What does that mean in practice? Well, it seems to mean that if
terrorists flew a hijacked plane into a tall building in Paris and Chirac
suspected that Iran was behind it, for example, he would only nuke the
prime minister's office, the defence ministry and the intelligence
headquarters in Tehran, and maybe three or four key military facilities
around the country. With luck, only a few million Iranians would die.
Chirac is so concerned about sparing innocent lives that he has
even ordered France's missiles to be modified for selective strikes that
don't obliterate whole countries. "All our nuclear forces have been
reconfigured accordingly. To this end, the number of warheads has been
reduced on some missiles on our submarines," he said.
During the Cold War, every one of the sixteen missiles on each
French submarine had six nuclear warheads, because France wanted to be able
to kill fifty or a hundred million Russians if the Soviet Union ever
invaded Western Europe. (It was called "deterrence.") But now, Chirac
assures us, a few of the missiles on each French submarine carry only two
or three few warheads, adjusted to cause smaller nuclear explosions, in
case he wants to kill foreigners in (relatively) smaller numbers.
What on earth has incited Chirac to start talking like this only
months before he leaves office? Partly, one suspects, it is just his
frustration at no longer being in the limelight, but he also has a more
serious goal: to secure the future of France's "force de frappe" (nuclear
striking force) long after he has left office. Like its creator, Charles de
Gaulle, he believes that it is an essential element of France's
independence and its ticket to all the high tables of the planet.
Even among Chirac's own right-wing colleagues there is now open
debate about the desirability of maintaining France's nuclear striking
force forever. After all, the Soviet Union, the enemy it was built to
deter, has been gone for fifteen years now, and there is not a single
nuclear-weapons power in the world that sees France as a potential enemy.
It costs 3 billion euros ($2 billion) a year just to maintain the country's
nuclear striking force, and one day in the not too distant future it will
cost a great deal more to modernise it. Why don't we just scrap it?
Faced with a similar dilemma on the other side of the Channel, Tony
Blair's government simply argues that Britain must keep its nuclear weapons
because -- well, because who knows what the world will be like twenty years
from now? In Cartesian France, however, you are expected to make a more
coherent argument than that, so Chirac is doing the best he can.
Chirac's basic problem is that France has no real, nuclear-armed
enemy to deter with its nukes any more. His solution is to extend the
target list to include non-nuclear enemies -- "terrorist-supporting
states," for example -- and justify their retention that way.
Chirac's new position is not unique. The United States retracted
its old half-promise not to use nukes against non-nuclear-weapons states
years ago, and the Bush administration has been pressing for the
development of a new generation of "mini-nukes" to do exactly what Chirac
suggests at a somewhat lower cost in innocent lives).
Bush believed that Saddam Hussein supported the 9/11 terrorist
attacks against the United States (or at least he said he did), and
existing US doctrine would have allowed him to use those nukes in response.
He invaded instead because the neo-conservatives who run US foreign policy
had been seeking a pretext to do exactly that for years, but another time
might be different. So why shouldn't Chirac adopt the same doctrine?
Because to demand that countries outside the nuclear weapons club
renounce any ambitions to get them, while the existing members expand their
nuclear target lists to include countries that don't have them, is worse
than hypocritical. It is self-defeating. After this, how can France demand
with a straight face that Iran forego nuclear weapons? The world has got
used to this sort of behaviour from the sole superpower, but who gave
Chirac permission to behave like an American president?