Moreover, unlike Russia, France and Britain have no smaller tactical nuclear weapons, relying entirely on much larger strategic missiles. That could make it difficult to respond to a small-scale Russian attack as they would only have city-buster bombs at their disposal, which could escalate any exchange into a full Armageddon.
“Neither the U.K. nor the French deterrent are really fundamentally designed to … extend their deterrence,” said Darya Dolzikova, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, whether or not they are stationed in other European countries.
Scaling up nuclear arsenals would also be both time-consuming and costly — and public coffers in both France and the U.K. are empty.
In a sign of closer ties, countries such as Germany are hoping to participate in Poker, France’s flagship military exercise simulating nuclear strikes. In December U.K. officials were allowed to attend for the first time, a few months after Paris and London signed a new agreement to deepen nuclear cooperation.
Officially, the U.K, is less eager to discuss changes to its nuclear posture. A British defense official dismissed the suggestion that London should participate in a shared deterrent, stressing that most EU countries are already protected by the U.K.’s nuclear weapons through NATO.
But some are now questioning that as well. “Maybe … we need to make sure that we are tightly aligned to the French,” said one Labour MP, and “have a bunch of layered responses that are supplied by the French, and we contribute to the top of it.”