Sip, are you really stupid, or just pretending?
Where do you get these cockamamie ideas?
Before this becomes Wally vs Sip, back to the OP of France vs ???: HISTORY BUFF CHALLENGE ALERT
It is odd how DeGaulle put France on a bomb-based “go it alone” track during the Cold War, pissing Uncle Sam off to the extent that every NATO nation’s flag was flown in the center courtyard of the Pentagon except the tricolor. Odd to me becuase, offhand, I can’t recall one war which the French have won hands-down that did not involve another nation’s help, or was not waged against a militarily inferior society. Can any of you?
Remember the ground rules: They had to have won hands-down (no negotiated peace such as the War of Spanish Succession), no allies (such as the Italians in the Franco-Austrian War) and no fish-in-a-barrel shoots such as at the Marquesas Islands.
(Note: no “look who’s talking” will be accepted, because I believe that if the Mexicans and Spaniards had gotten their acts together, we’d have been whipped in 1846 and again in 1898)
Myself, I can’t help thnking that the French nukes are as much for technolgical as military pride. Unlike the English and Germans, the French don’t get the credit they deserve as good engineers. We forget about teflon and the Suez Canal and the Eiffel Tower and instead see France in terms of painting and fancy clothes and cooking. France needs the bomb because if she instead put up a statue commemorating her invention of oral sex, narrow minds in the ouside world would prevail in its lack of appreciation.
I doubt France invented oral sex – considering there are some other species of great apes (e.g. Bonobos) that do it, too. Bonobos don’t even watch French TV. 
What - building nukes is supposed to be more impressive than inventing oral sex ? The priorities of some people…
But seriously: France decided to stop cooperating with NATO in the military sense in 1966, remaining as a political member only, which probably explains the tricolore’s absence in the Pentagon. They did, however, arrange for cooperation in case of an “unprovoked attack” - in other words, they decided to have their cake and eat it, too. Of course, nobody ever doubted that they’d side with NATO in case of war. But they did have much closer ties with the Soviet Union than any other NATO country.
The French governments over the times have really, really wanted to be perceived as serious players in world politics, and that might actually have been the motivation for their nukes, which is a bit sad. Of course, figuring out the French is not easy for outsiders.
The German archrivals, OTOH, have apparently managed to maneuver themselves into a leading European role without having to invest in weapons of mass destruction.
(And now, Esprix, we’re all ready for mr. Lehrer’s “MLF lullaby” - take it away!)
Norman
I don’t have to go very far! Off the top of my head, I can mention the French revolutionary war, roughly from 1792 to 1801, in which major european powers (Austria, Prussia, Spain, Great Britain) tried to overthrow the french republic and restore the Bourbons to power. The french decisively defeated them. (Of course, when Napoleon decided to try to take over most of Europe, he was surely doomed in the long term, but that was a different war.)
For those of you who say “the Western European powers can depend on the USA for their defense”, I have this response: Never depend too much on an ally to help you! Czechoslovakia learned this the hard way in World War II.
I give that one to you Arnold. Frankly, I did lump all the beligerency from 1789 to 1815 into one big nasty heap. I can see that I was in error to do so. But allow me to group everything undertaken by Napoleon, either before or after he proclaimed himself emperor, from the Italian campaign until Waterloo, as one war. Yes, he beat the Austrians & Russians at Austerlitz, but then they ultimately returned to take Paris. So can you name another?
Seems to me, the sole reason that France has the atom bomb is so that the rest of the western world does not sneer at them as much as they do at Italy. In truth, most people probably hold Italy and it’s people in much higher regard than the French. Despite Mouselini, despite the mafia, despite the Vatican.