The Russian invasion of Ukraine seems to have given new relevance to an old European security question: does the EU need its own independent deterrent or is the US shield sufficient?
With the departure of the not always supportive United Kingdom, France remained the only country in the European club with atomic weapons and a permanent seat on the Security Council.
By the middle of the last century, Konrad Adenauer, the first German Federal Chancellor, and Franz-Josef Strauss, the Bavarian Minister of Defense, had already discussed the issue of collective defense with the governments of France and Italy.
As the weekly Der Spiegel reminds, in November 1957 Strauss signed a secret agreement with his French and Italian colleagues aimed at making Europe militarily independent from the United States.
This plan, however, was to be thwarted by French president Charles de Gaulle, who, in particular enraged Strauss, decided that France would have its own nuclear weapons without sharing it with its European partners.
The late 1970s and early 1980s were years of mass protests against the so-called “double NATO resolution” of the German peace movement: the deployment of Pershing II and US cruise missiles in Germany in response to the SS-20 Soviets.
Opposition to this rearmament within the Social Democratic party itself led to the fall of Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who was its main supporter in the Government, in 1982, he lost a vote of confidence in Parliament and was replaced by the Christian Democrat Helmut Kohl.
Until the current war in Ukraine, leading members of the German Social Democratic Party, including the head of the parliamentary group, opposed Berlin’s purchase of new fighters capable of carrying atomic weapons.
However, after the invasion of Ukraine, the new coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals changed their positions and promised to purchase American-made F-35 fighters capable of nuclear strikes on Russian soil.
The problem is that, despite its overtly Atlanticist orientation, the Berlin government doesn’t seem entirely sure it can rely on the US nuclear shield in the future, especially if Donald Trump is winning the next White House election. .
And it also recognizes that Russia now has the fourth largest army in the world and remains potentially very powerful, despite the strategic shortcomings shown in the invasion of Ukraine.
Some German strategists have long argued that France should abandon its traditional doctrine and agree to share its nuclear arsenal with other EU countries that do not possess such weapons.
German diplomat Christoph Heugen, who for years was an adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel and currently chairs the Munich Security Conference, believes the EU should be more concerned with its own defense than it has ever been before.
“We will need to discuss with France and other European partners what we are willing to contribute together to a common strategy of deterrence against Russia,” Heugen told Der Spiegel.
Germany and other EU countries should contribute to the financing of the French force de frappe in exchange for giving Paris the right to consult in both the planning and execution of a possible nuclear attack against a hostile power.
But even if Paris accepts such a proposal, which at the moment seems very difficult, there are doubts among experts that the French nuclear power, with only four active submarines, will be enough to deal Russia a second devastating blow in the event of a nuclear strike. from him.
In addition, France has only strategic nuclear weapons and, unlike Russia and the United States, no other tactical weapons that would allow a conflict to escalate and escalate depending on the level of the enemy’s reaction.
Experts say that flexible options must exist to deter a country like Russia, because without that flexibility France would have to respond with its most powerful weapon, provoking the same kind of Russian response and facing the consequent danger. of the destruction of the whole of Europe.
A bloody war, whose end is unpredictable and no one knows how to foresee, harms us all and benefits only the death dealers and their accomplices in governments.