France Offers Nuclear Umbrella to Europe, But Is It Ready to Strike Moscow

France has yet to actively push the idea of replacing the US nuclear umbrella with its own deterrent, but the concept continues to emerge in strategic discussions, especially as Europe rethinks its security architecture in the face of growing threats. At the heart of the debate is one key question: does Paris have the political will, psychological readiness, and nuclear capability to defend Europe? This topic is raised in the publication "Everything Changes, But Nothing Changes: Can France Overcome Its Own Nuclear Doctrine?", published by War on the Rocks, which states: for France to offer a credible nuclear umbrella to Europe, it must be prepared to use nuclear weapons, even to the point of destroying Moscow. But is France really ready to make such a commitment?

France became a nuclear power in 1968 under President Charles de Gaulle, who formulated the basic principle of French nuclear doctrine, known as dissuasion du faible au fort - “ambiguity of deterrence”. According to this concept, adversaries should never be sure how far France is prepared to go with nuclear weapons. Strategic ambiguity is intended to enhance deterrence by keeping potential enemies guessing.

But when it comes to extending that deterrence beyond France's borders to include European allies, ambiguity may not be enough. The psychological threshold for launching a nuclear strike in defense of another country, even a close partner, is much higher than that for defending one's own territory. And this is where doubts begin to arise.

In the 1970s, French military planners began to take a more aggressive stance, declaring that France’s nuclear deterrence extended beyond its national territory. This doctrine, however, did not last long. In the early 1980s, with the election of François Mitterrand as president, French nuclear policy took on a more passive character.

Mitterand, who led France from 1981 to 1995, is often seen as a man who deliberately avoided confronting the issue of nuclear deterrence. As observers have noted, he seemed to hope that the issue would resolve itself. When in 1991 As the Soviet Union collapsed, the Warsaw Pact dissolved, and the Cold War officially ended, France responded by reducing its nuclear posture and even taking steps toward partial disarmament.

A case in point is the decommissioning of the Hades short-range ballistic missile system, developed in the 1980s to carry nuclear warheads. Often described as the French equivalent of the Russian “Iskander” system, Hades was scrapped before becoming a permanent part of France's arsenal.

Today, France maintains a robust nuclear dyad, made up of air- and sea-based missile delivery platforms. But this raises a deeper strategic question: would Paris actually be prepared to press the nuclear button if circumstances required it? And is the current French arsenal really sufficient to inflict unacceptable damage on a major adversary - such as Russia?

After all, the so-called “Moscow criterion“ - the willingness to strike Russia with nuclear weapons and inflict crushing losses - has long been a core tenet of the UK's deterrent stance. During the Cold War, France itself had such a large nuclear arsenal that no one doubted its ability and willingness to impose catastrophic consequences on any aggressor.

In light of these dilemmas, perhaps a more realistic course is for France not to propose an abstract “nuclear umbrella“ for the whole of Europe, but rather to fully integrate itself into NATO's nuclear planning structures. This would allow Paris to contribute to collective deterrence without the burden of unilateral nuclear guarantees.