French President Emmanuel Macron gestures during an agreement signing at the Merdeka Palace in Jakarta, Indonesia, May 28, 2025. Photo: Reuters
PARIS:
Emmanuel Macron will update France’s nuclear doctrine on Monday, ruling out shared European control while outlining what Paris can offer allies concerned about the reliability of the US nuclear umbrella under Donald Trump.
Although France and Britain are both nuclear powers, most European countries rely primarily on the US to deter potential adversaries — a decades-old pillar of transatlantic security.
But Trump’s rapprochement with Russia over the Ukraine war and his tougher stance towards traditional allies — including threats to seize Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark — have unsettled European governments.
Earlier this month in Munich, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Berlin had opened discussions with France on a potential European nuclear deterrent, which Macron said should form part of a “holistic approach to defence and security”.
Other states, including traditionally pro-US Nordic nations, have cautiously expressed interest.
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However, European officials privately question how far France’s arsenal could stretch to protect the continent. Concerns include cost-sharing, who would control launch decisions, and whether prioritising nuclear forces risks crowding out urgently needed investment in conventional capabilities.
France spends roughly €5.6 billion ($6.04 billion) a year maintaining its stockpile of around 290 submarine- and air-launched weapons — the world’s fourth-largest arsenal.
“For Europe, if you really want to go it alone… you have to build up your own nuclear capability. That costs billions and billions of euros,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told the European Parliament in January.
“You would lose the ultimate guarantor of our freedom, which is the US nuclear umbrella.”
According to expert estimates, as part of NATO’s nuclear deterrence, the US stations around 100 nuclear bombs in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.
In the event of conflict, the air forces of these non-nuclear countries would carry US bombs under the so-called “nuclear sharing” doctrine.
US Undersecretary of Defence Elbridge Colby told allies in Brussels this month that Washington would continue extending its nuclear deterrent to Europe, even as it invests more than a trillion dollars in modernising its own arsenal.
French officials say Paris does not seek to replace the US umbrella or compete with NATO.
“While US nuclear forces’ primary mission is to target adversary nuclear arsenals, their French and British counterparts aim to inflict unacceptable damage on the political, military and economic centres of potential adversaries,” Etienne Marcuz of the FRS think tank wrote in a recent note.
“This doctrine requires far fewer warheads to be credible.”
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French officials say they want Europeans to better understand what France’s doctrine can — and cannot — provide. But Paris is adamant that funding its deterrent must remain solely a French responsibility to ensure exclusive national control.
A core element of France’s posture is “strategic ambiguity” over when nuclear weapons might be used, and where French vital interests overlap with broader European defence.
For some partners, this lack of clarity is unsettling.
“We first want to see what France has to offer… It’s not about having deterrence. It’s about how credible it is,” said a senior eastern European diplomat.
Any expanded French role would also require Europe to develop deep-strike missiles with ranges beyond 2,000km — a capability it currently lacks.
Developing tactical nuclear weapons, intended for battlefield use rather than long-range strategic strikes, is seen as even less likely.
Officials say doing so would raise alarm under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, long championed by European governments.
“We understand where these discussions are coming from. They stem from the fact that our transatlantic alliance is not what it used to be,” European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters in Brussels this month.
“My personal view is that if we have more nuclear weapons around the world, I don’t think we’re going to be in a more peaceful world,” she said.
Speaking at France’s nuclear submarine base in Brittany, Macron will deliver the customary once-per-presidential-term update on nuclear doctrine.
France’s stance aims to maintain a minimal but credible arsenal designed to impose losses severe enough to deter any first strike.
“Just discussing alternatives is sending a message to Moscow,” said one senior European official.
French officials offered no details ahead of Macron’s speech but said the strategic landscape has shifted dramatically since his last address in 2020, citing Russia’s growing arsenal and heightened nuclear rhetoric since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
France has long maintained that its vital interests have a European dimension. In 2020, Macron went further, inviting partners into strategic discussions — an overture that drew little enthusiasm at the time.
Officials said one principle remains unchanged: only the French president can authorise a nuclear strike.
“It is the case and will remain so,” a French presidential adviser said.
