As far as i know, France maintains quite an impressive nuclear force-it has SSBMs (nuclear missile launching submarines), and has aircraft-based light bombers 9capable of dropping nuclear bombs). I’m not sure about their land based ICBMs.
My question: this costs France quite a bit-what threat is this force intended to address? France has its own foreign policy-what does the leadership see the nuclear force’s role?
The British, of course. And the Germans. Just in case.
Oh, and the US.
In case it needs to surrender within the first 11 minutes of combat, then they have a nice incentive to get the terms to their liking as they have these powerful nukes to offer…
In the last century France has on two separate occasions seen large portions of its territory occupied by foreign powers. If things had gone sideways it is not impossible to imagine some alternate universe where France spent the last fifty years under the boot of the Soviets.
One could hypothetically say that Russia would never invade western Europe because the U.S. and the U.K. would retaliate. Yeah? Well, maybe they would. But if you’re France, do you want to rely on other nations assuring you they would risk total destruction to avenge you? Better to be able to mete out the punishment yourself. Or you could say it’s a different era and first world nations don’t go around invading and occupying each other anymore. Yeah, maybe. As it stands, Russia could not invade western Europe without national suicide thanks to France’s submarine forces. Better to be safe than sorry.
France’s nuclear weapons program costs about three and a half billion dollars per year. That is indeed a lot of money, but seriously, how much would France have to spend otherwise to have the same national security effect? My view is that in terms of bang-for-the-buck (har har) nuclear weapons are the cheapest weapons around. A small number of nukes on missiles has an effect on other countries’ plans in a way that can perhaps only be compared with a country owning several wings of advanced stealth aircraft, precision guided weapons, and highly trained pilots… and whoa, that costs a hell of a lot more money.
But I philosophically agree with the point implicit in this thread and the one about the UK: I think there’s a moral imperative to make nuclear weapons an object of international scorn, not envy. That starts with the nuclear powers starting to reduce and perhaps even eliminate their stockpile. The difficultly is that morality generally takes a back seat to security.
Do you honestly believe that morally condemning nuclear weapons is going to cause the bad actors in the world to shun them?
If you reduce the western arsenal you’ll have exactly the opposite effect. The strategic value of having one nuclear weapon goes way up if your enemy also only has one. Or dozen. Disarm the free world, and you’ll encourage the lunatics to seek out nukes with even more zeal.
Countries always act in their own interest. If there’s a big strategic value to having nuclear weapons, they will seek to have them. Period. The only way you can stop them is to either force them to stop, or to offer them enough incentive to agree to forego nuclear weapons development. You’re not going to shame them into it, that’s for sure.
What prevents countries from adopting economic systems that are based upon slavery? I contend it is primarily the moral outrage that would result from such a decision. Even China, which really has little patience or care for criticism by other countries, is sensitive to criticism based on its use of prison labor for making commercial products. I think a collective condemnation of something can harness some of the more outrageous examples of countries trying to act “in the own interest.”
Don’t be so simplistic. Countries are not like children who seek to eat only candy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner no matter what anyone says. Countries generally rational, meaning that actions have consequences and those consequences are part of any calculation of what constitutes self-interest.
In other words, just because countries act in their own self-interest doesn’t mean they are immune to pressure. There are whole bodies of international law and behavior based upon countries weighing the risks and benefits of controversial behavior, and the negatives of becoming a pariah nation are very convincing to many countries.
The challenge of putting nuclear weapons into that category are very great indeed, and it probably won’t happen for many, many years, but I think the alternative is that it is only a matter of time before nuclear weapons will be used again, and I think that should be abhorrent to people, and we should be compelled by morality to stop it before that happens.
I think you’re the one being simplistic. First of all, there’s plenty of slavery left in the world. It’s a real problem in Africa. And there would be far more of it if it actually worked in anything but the simplest, physical labor based economies. There isn’t widespread slavery because it’s impossible to build a modern, economically complex economy with an educated population based on slavery. It has nothing to do with moral condemnation.
And yet, we can control a country’s behaviour somewhat with the right tools, but ‘moral condemnation’ isn’t one of them. If China could sell all the shoddy goods they could make, do you think they’d care if we think they are behaving irresponsibly? For that matter, have you noticed that the world has ‘condremned’ carbon dioxide emissions, but that hasn’t stopped China from flatly stating that they’d burn as much as they wanted and everyone else could stuff it?
The only thing you can do is what I said in my other message, which is to threaten the country’s self-interest. What will stop China from making shoddy goods? Our refusal to buy them. What will stop a rogue regime from building nuclear weapons? Either military threats or economic retaliation such that it ceases to be in their interest to build nukes.
None of this requires abandoning your own arsenal. In fact, maintaining your own arsenal is a good deterrent.
Talk about missing the point.
When most nations join together to say that 'x" is not to be tolerated, the consequences will inevitably follow. Taking a moral stand on world issues doesn’t mean holding one’s breath until everyone stops doing something. For example, it is illegal to import goods made by slaves into virtually any country (save a handful of pariahs). Many countries regularly place sanctions on countries with poor human rights records. Most of the world has stepped forward and agreed that prisoners of war should not be subject to arbitrary execution or abuse, and that civilians should not be indiscriminately targeted during times of war – and interestingly enough, these last two don’t really even have a regime to enforce compliance.
All of these policies start with a moral decision that slavery is wrong, human rights abuses are wrong, that torture of POWs is wrong, and murdering civilians is wrong. Nuclear holocaust ought to be put on that list of wrong things, and we should then devise incentives and disincentives to discourage nuclear armament.
Their land force component of their rather niftily titled Force de Frappe has been disbanded.
In other words, let’s make the world safe for conventional war. I’ve never found that to be a particularly moral or convincing idea.
Would you support all countries having nuclear arms? That would certainly discourage conventional war.
I don’t believe that any country has a “right” to arm itself with a particular type of weapon. International relations are more complex and subtle than that. If a neighboring country is run by some nut-case, or a bunch of fanatics, I don’t want them to have any weapons. In some cases, nuclear weapons are a deterrent against aggression. One useful attribute of nuclear weapons is that they are difficult and expensive to build, which tends to keep them out of the hands of the riff-raff.
Granted, I have not yet read anything specifically about this period in history, but my understanding is that the Soviets had their first successful Atomic Testing in 1949.
The Soviets had made very clear their intent to spread Communism, at the point of a gun if necessary. France had good reason to be concerned about the Soviet threat.
The only realistic defense at the time was to have their won nuclear arsenal, and so they did exactly that.
I have long thought that, in the absence of atomic weapons, NATO and the Warsaw Pact would have been fighting across Europe by the mid 50’s.
They’re on our side (I believe).
China’s got the bomb, but have no fears - they can’t wipe us out for at least five years.
Who’s next?
It’s all right, they can only deliver it by Citroen.
(Old Euro joke: In Heaven, the police are British, the cooks are French, the cars are German, and the women are Italian. In Hell, the police are German, the cooks are British, the cars are French, and the women are Italian.)
Renault makes some pretty good cars.
And as a result, none of those things happen - except when it is convenient for the leadership of a country or large armed faction that they happen. Which means that they go on every single day to a greater or lesser extent. Given that breaches of these moral rules are counted in the tens of thousands on an annual basis, I’m not convinced they make a good basis for nuclear arms control.
Marshmallow had it right. After the Franco-Prussian War, WWI and most especially WW2 the French didn’t, and today still don’t, want to rely on other countries for their military security. They also have a residual view of themselves as still being a Great Power (buttressed by their permanent membership on, and veto power in, the UN Security Council, even as their economic, diplomatic and cultural “soft power” slowly declines). If you’re a Great Power, by gum, you’ve gotta have nukes. That’s just how it’s done. DeGaulle saw it that way when he pulled France out of NATO, and later French administrations, both conservative and liberal, have pretty much seen things the same way.
Old joke: Why are French streets lined with trees? So German troops can march in the shade.
Nice Tom Lehrer quotes, BTW. 