Inside a speech delivered Monday from a top-secret submarine base in western France, President Emmanuel Macron said France is moving to align its nuclear deterrent posture more closely with European allies while keeping sole responsibility for any nuclear strike decision, according to the Associated Press.
Macron told the audience that the move is aimed at strengthening Europe’s strategic autonomy and that France has started nuclear talks with eight countries: Britain, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden and Denmark.
Under the arrangement Macron described, partners would see their territory gain “a clearly affirmed link to our deterrence,” while Macron said France would not share decision-making authority. He said the president remains solely responsible for any decision to use nuclear weapons under France’s constitution, and he presented the policy as compatible with that framework.
Macron also described the deterrence approach as “forward deterrence.” He said France’s new approach would offer partners a role in deterrence exercises and, in a crisis, could pair French nuclear capabilities with European conventional capabilities.
He outlined elements of that broader concept, including early warning systems using allies’ satellites and radars to detect and track missiles, plus engagements involving air defense, anti-drone protections and long-range deep-strike capabilities. Macron said the ultimate doctrine would allow the temporary deployment of nuclear-armed aircraft to allied countries across Europe.
The policy shift drew skepticism even among experts who discussed the practical implications. Florian Galleri, a nuclear deterrence expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s security studies program, said Macron’s plan reflects a contradiction: “The strategic backing intended to integrate French nuclear deterrence into a collective European defense framework necessarily requires a degree of coordination and joint planning,” Galleri argued, adding, “One cannot, for example, carry out a nuclear strike without consulting a partner.”
In Macron’s portrayal of the threat environment, the strategy change responds to heightened tensions with Russia, which has a vast nuclear arsenal and is developing new missiles, as well as China expanding its nuclear forces. Macron said, “our way of thinking must change,” and he pointed to recent U.S. national security and defense strategies as reflecting “a reshuffling of American priorities.”
Experts said the effort also reflects European doubts about U.S. reliability. Galleri said France’s move would amount to some form of a nuclear security guarantee in a crisis, explaining that “Macron’s move reflects that, in case of a nuclear crisis, France would be the one offering ‘some form of a nuclear security guarantee.’”
Macron’s remarks also included a call to strengthen France’s nuclear arsenal. He said evolving defenses among France’s competitors, the emergence of regional powers, possible coordination among adversaries and proliferation risks had led him to conclude that France must increase the number of nuclear warheads, for the first time since the 1990s and the end of the Cold War.
AP reported that France currently possesses an estimated 290 warheads, and Héloïse Fayet, a nuclear deterrence specialist at the French Institute of International Relations, said Macron cited language in which France’s nuclear deterrent is designed to inflict damage from which an adversary would not recover. Fayet said “we must always be able to inflict that kind of damage,” and she criticized Macron’s decision not to publicize the numbers of France’s warheads, saying that if Russia improved its defense systems, France would need “more nuclear warheads.”
Macron said the European coordination he described would come in addition to NATO’s nuclear mission, which France does not participate in, and that it would be compatible with NATO’s role in European security. Ian Lesser, a NATO expert and distinguished fellow at the German Marshall Fund, said Macron’s move “reflects the state of security in Europe” after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the “growing uncertainty about the American security commitment to Europe.”
Lesser said Europe now has to “deal with a more aggressive Russia for some time to come,” and he stressed that NATO’s deterrence depends on a strong American troop presence in Europe, including U.S. nuclear weapons stationed in countries such as Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. “The bulk of Europe’s conventional deterrence is lodged in NATO — strategic command and organization, design and deployment,” Lesser said, adding, “NATO is critical” and that “France is really not looking to weaken that. So the point about it being complementary is important.”