It is an important evolution of nuclear doctrine. France will deepen its cooperation in nuclear deterrence with the United Kingdom, announced Emmanuel Macron, this Thursday, July 10, at a press conference in London along with Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“We will deepen our cooperation in the field of deterrence,” said the President of the Republic, remembering that Paris and London are “the only two states endowed with the atomic bomb” in Europe.
A nuclear supervision group will be responsible for leading this improved cooperation. It is expected that the latter will be directed by the British Palace and the British office to improve the cooperation of “policies, capacities and operations.”
“It is a deepening of the consultation mechanism that already exists”, but at a lower level, explains Héloïse Fayet to AFP. Today “this is really an additional step with an unprecedented degree of coordination at the military and political level.”
This opens the door to concrete translations, such as joint underwater patrols, with an attack submarine from a spray of one submarine of the other, or the participation of British planes in French exercises.
During the questions and answers, Macron specifies that the possible coordination of the French and British nuclear forces is “totally different from what we do in Ukraine.”
European dimension
Emmanuel Macron announced a doctrine change. Since the Joint Declaration of “Vuelles” in 1995, Paris and London have indicated that “there is no situation in which the vital interests of one (…) can be threatened without the vital interests that the other be also”.
This camplers statement was strictly limited to the definition of the vital interests of the two countries. The scope of the new cooperation is much more extensive.
“Checkers was a single Franco-British statement of a very political level,” summarizes Heloïse Fayet, a researcher on nuclear issues at the French Institute of International Relations.
There are two advances: at the operational level with this coordination of the two deterrence, “analyzes researcher Héloïse Fayet for AFP”. And the second is obviously the extension of the joint European dimension. “
Message to Russia
This doctrinal development could “complicate the Russian strategic calculations” according to Artur Kacprzyk, of the Poland Pism Research Center.
Since its origin, French nuclear deterrence has been completely independent and has been based on the appreciation of a single man, the President of the Republic, of a threat to the vital interests of the country.
According to the Sipri Institute, France has 290 nuclear heads, divided between missiles aboard four submarines and those transported by the Rafale combat plane.
The United Kingdom has its side of 225 nuclear heads. British nuclear deterrence has only an oceanic component with four submarines of machines, but the government announced in June the restoration of an air component with the purchase of 12 US F-35 combat planes.
Source: BFM TV
