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The ‘parapluie’ is not for free. As European allies sign on to France\u2019s “forward deterrence” concept, many are realizing that a French nuclear umbrella comes at a distinct price\u2014namely, adapting to Paris’s terms without gaining a vote on command or policy. (Illustration by Thomas Gaulkin; Photo (modified) by Dominique Jacovides \/ Abaca \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n
When French President Emmanuel Macron introduced the concept of forward deterrence during his March 2 speech on France\u2019s nuclear policy<\/a> at the \u00cele Longue nuclear submarine base, many European governments enthusiastically endorsed it.<\/p>\n Since Russia\u2019s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Europeans have been increasingly concerned about deterring Russian aggression. At the same time, the Trump administration\u2019s unpredictability and disengagement from European security undermine the value of NATO\u2019s nuclear sharing arrangements.<\/p>\n Against this backdrop, Macron\u2019s proposal for a strengthened European nuclear deterrent seemed to square several circles for non-nuclear-weapon NATO members: It aims to bring French nuclear weapons closer into the European security equation, without angering Washington. And Macron emphasized that his initiative complements\u2014rather than competes with\u2014NATO\u2019s nuclear-sharing arrangements, which many Europeans want to leave intact as long as possible.<\/p>\n Four months on, things increasingly turn out not to be so simple. Implementation of the initiative is uneven, its level of ambition remains unclear, and questions remain around compatibility with the US nuclear extended deterrent.<\/p>\n To address these problems, France\u2019s non-nuclear partners should increase coordination among themselves on nuclear issues, rather than engage Paris on a one-to-one basis only. Earlier and better harmonization of their own positions would make it easier for them to pursue their own interests vis-\u00e0-vis Paris effectively. Increased coordination would also facilitate better alignment of the French concept of forward deterrence with NATO\u2019s nuclear sharing arrangements.<\/p>\n An uneven playing field. Nine partners have now expressed varying degrees of interest in participating in the French initiative on forward deterrence, which can involve participating in French nuclear exercises to practice support for nuclear-strike missions and, potentially, the temporary deployment of French nuclear-capable aircraft to bases on the territory of other participating countries. During crises or conflicts, dispersing French nuclear capabilities<\/a> could help to improve their survivability and, therefore, strengthen deterrence. Different from NATO nuclear sharing<\/a>, there would be no formal security guarantee, no permanent deployment of nuclear assets to third countries, and no joint decision-making on nuclear policies.<\/p>\n During his address, President Macron mentioned Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Poland, the Netherlands, and Sweden as non-nuclear partners. Since then, Norway and France signed the Narvik agreement on bilateral defense relations<\/a>, which includes Oslo joining the French initiative on European nuclear deterrence, bringing the number of non-nuclear partners to eight.<\/p>\n The other European nuclear-weapon state, the United Kingdom, has a long-standing cooperation with France on nuclear deterrence.<\/p>\n In addition, Finland<\/a> has expressed an interest in joining the initiative and, on June 17, changed a law<\/a> to make it legal to deploy nuclear weapons on its territory during a crisis or conflict. And in April, Czech President Andrej \u200cBabis also expressed interest<\/a> in discussing involvement in forward deterrence, but it remains unclear whether additional steps have been taken since.<\/p>\n To avoid the perception of competing with NATO\u2019s Nuclear Planning Group, which brings together all 32 NATO states except France, Paris will engage its nuclear partners bilaterally. Coordination of these dialogues is likely to impose a large burden on the French bureaucracy. But it also conveniently situates Paris at the center of a web of deterrence dialogues, making it easier to tailor the terms and conditions of partnerships to its liking.<\/p>\n From the perspective of France\u2019s partners, this arrangement of separate dialogues is less advantageous. Each partner will bring specific interests to the table, influenced by geography, domestic politics, strategic culture, and history. Two things unite them: the hope that participation in forward deterrence will improve their security, and a desire to shape French nuclear policies in ways that meet their specific interests.<\/p>\n These core interests have always been two drivers behind the non-nuclear Allies\u2019 involvement in NATO\u2019s nuclear sharing arrangements. They hope that, in nuclear consultation, \u201cthe gap between the interests of the nuclear power as security provider and nonnuclear prot\u00e9g\u00e9s as security beneficiaries<\/a>\u201d could be bridged. As a result, non-nuclear allies want their nuclear-armed allies to inform and consult them on nuclear policies, including on the existential question of when, where, and how nuclear weapons will be used. Such nuclear consultations have often been difficult and occasionally controversial<\/a> in NATO, and France\u2019s new nuclear partners will not just want to be consumers of what Paris has to offer but will bring their own demands to the table.<\/p>\n Better alignment of their policies would make it easier to ensure that dialogue is a true two-way street. Such coordination would be easier if France\u2019s partners were to approach Paris from a level playing field. However, at least for now, there appear to be different categories of nuclear partners.<\/p>\n In his speech, Macron singled out the United Kingdom as \u201ca major partner\u201d and Germany as \u201ccrucial partners [sic].\u201d London and Berlin will converse with Paris through newly established nuclear steering groups, which have already met at senior political levels.<\/p>\n On the same day of announcing the French initiative, President Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz published a joint declaration<\/a>, which is \u201cbased on the shared understanding that the nuclear dimension of deterrence remains a cornerstone of European security.\u201d<\/p>\n Nuclear cooperation between the two NATO nuclear weapon states\u2014France and the United Kingdom\u2014is long-standing, and both have recently intensified it with agreement on the Northwood Declaration<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sweden is the third country that has engaged Paris through a nuclear steering group<\/a>. Two months after Macron\u2019s speech, Paris and Stockholm signed a multi-billion-euro defense deal. President Macron placed the agreement<\/a> squarely in the context of the closer strategic partnership that led to Sweden\u2019s participation in the French initiative on forward deterrence.<\/p>\n On July 10, France and Poland held their first Nuclear Steering Group meeting<\/a> in Paris \u201cto discuss European security issues.\u201d Senior officials from defense and foreign ministries agreed on a \u201cjoint roadmap.\u201d<\/p>\n Paris may want to establish Nuclear Steering Groups with all nine current nuclear partners. But given the depth and range of cooperation under the forward deterrence initiative, it is likely to vary from country to country.<\/p>\n A one-way street on nuclear policy? Non-nuclear allies participate in extended deterrence arrangements for two main reasons: They hope that positive security guarantees from the nuclear-armed ally will avert attacks against them. And they use consultations under these arrangements to influence the nuclear policies and force postures of the nuclear ally. This has been true under NATO\u2019s nuclear consultative mechanisms and will also drive involvement of France\u2019s partners in nuclear deterrence arrangements.<\/p>\n But Paris has historically been opposed to the concept of joint nuclear discussions and decision-making.<\/p>\n Preserving national autonomy was, after all, the main reason why Paris decided not to join NATO\u2019s Nuclear Planning Group when it was set up in 1966. During his \u00cele Longue speech, Macron repeated the \u201cfour noes\u201d that are at the core of French nuclear autonomy: No joint decision on nuclear use, no joint planning, no sharing of the definition of French vital interests, no nuclear guarantee \u201cin the strict sense of the term.\u201d These limits suggest that Paris expects its partners to adapt to French traditional nuclear thinking with little room for give-and-take.<\/p>\n It therefore remains unclear whether and to what extent France\u2019s partners will be able to influence Paris<\/a> to take their national security interests into account. A brochure published by the French Ministry of the Defense<\/a> after Macron\u2019s speech repeats that \u201cFrance\u2019s nuclear deterrent is not subject to any form of sharing\u201d and that the President \u201cis the sole decision-maker concerning the deployment of nuclear forces and, more broadly, the doctrine and sizing of national capabilities.\u201d The document emphasizes that this decision-making autonomy cannot be called into question, \u201cincluding when implementing the European dimension of France\u2019s deterrence strategy. While the interests of allies may be taken into account in the President\u2019s decision-making process, that decision remains sovereign and is always based on an assessment of the Nation\u2019s vital interests.\u201d [Translation by the author.]<\/p>\n However, the expectations of some partners may go beyond such loose assurances of being heard. For instance, Merz said on July 17 during a press conference<\/a> after a meeting of the Franco-German Defense and Security Council that France and Germany are embarking now on a \u201cnew, common way\u201d on deterrence. He described the work on a \u201cjoint doctrine\u201d to involve discussions in the Nuclear Steering Group on the appropriate \u201cmix of nuclear and conventional capabilities\u201d to improve deterrence. [Translation by the author.]<\/p>\n Still, differences between French nuclear priorities and those of its partners exist.<\/p>\n Take nuclear arms control. NATO has historically paired initiatives<\/a> to strengthen deterrence and defense with offers of engagement to Moscow. But Macron put out little hope for pursuing a similar dual-track approach, saying that \u201cthe field of rules has turned into a field of ruins.\u201d He argued that because \u201cthe prevailing animosity does not inspire the confidence required to rebuild the norms of collective security,\u201d France is \u201cright to harden [its] position.\u201d<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly then, bilateral statements issued by Paris and its nuclear partners do not refer to arms control and only mention nuclear nonproliferation as a shared goal. Berlin and Paris merely state that they \u201cwill continue to comply with their obligations under international law including the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons\u201d (NPT). France and the United Kingdom, in the Northwood declaration, reaffirm their \u201cfull support\u201d for the NPT and for their obligations under the treaty. They promise to \u201ccoordinate ever more closely to uphold and reinforce the international non-proliferation architecture.\u201d<\/p>\n Even under the NPT, some of France\u2019s non-nuclear partners have a level of ambition that goes beyond such generic support and is at odds with French nuclear policy. Germany, the Netherlands, and Poland, for example, are participants of the Non-proliferation and Disarmament Initiative, which has called on nuclear weapon states<\/a> to improve the transparency of information related to their nuclear weapons. But in his speech, not only did Macron announce a nuclear weapons build-up, but he also reduced French nuclear transparency: \u201cTo put an end to any speculation, we will no longer release figures on our nuclear arsenal, as we have done in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n Will France\u2019s non-nuclear partners be successful in urging Paris to reduce such discrepancies with their own policies? To be sure, they might be more successful if addressing such differences collectively, rather than in asymmetrical one-to-one dialogues.<\/p>\n Alignment with NATO nuclear deterrence. In his nuclear speech, Macron was at pains to avoid any impression that his initiative could be seen as a competition to NATO\u2019s nuclear sharing arrangements. Forward deterrence, he said, \u201cis a distinct effort which has its own value and is perfectly complementary to NATO\u2019s at both strategic and technical level.\u201d<\/p>\n Such separation may seem feasible and desirable from a French perspective. Paris, after all, is not ready to involve its non-nuclear partners in joint nuclear planning and restricts their participation to practical arrangements such as joint exercises or conventional support for nuclear strike missions.<\/p>\n But things look different for non-nuclear partners.<\/p>\n They would, for example, want to insist that France and NATO deconflict their nuclear targeting by making sure that the set of nuclear targets in respective operational plans does sit well together. Allies would also want to avoid a situation in which Paris is requesting support for one nuclear mission, while a separate request may come in from NATO, via the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).<\/p>\n This concern is not abstract. On July 16, German fighter aircraft participated for the first time in a joint air activity in the context of the French concept of forward deterrence. The nuclear exercise<\/a> involved two nuclear-capable French Rafale aircraft and two German Eurofighters from N\u00f6rvenich Air Force Base, as well as a French multirole tanker and transport Phenix aircraft for air-to-air refueling. The exercise took place ahead of the July 17 meetings of the Franco-German Defense and Security Council and the French-German Nuclear Steering Group. But non-nuclear NATO members only have a specific set of capabilities to provide such conventional support for nuclear missions, and they may not be able to put them on the table for NATO as well as possible French missions.<\/p>\n The Northwood declaration adds another level of complexity because the United Kingdom has assigned all its nuclear weapons to NATO, meaning that SACEUR can request the employment of UK (but not of French) nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n More difficulties for non-nuclear weapon states in aligning NATO nuclear sharing and forward deterrence may lie ahead. The United States is drawing down its conventional forces in Europe at the same time it is trying to compensate<\/a> for the resulting commitment deficit by increasing reliance on NATO nuclear sharing. To that aim, Washington reportedly has been in talks with Poland and maybe other French partners to sell them additional dual-capable F-35 aircraft, which could be certified to carry US B61 nuclear gravity bombs.<\/p>\n This shift away from conventional deterrence implies more emphasis on US nuclear weapons in Europe as warfighting tools. But this remains anathema to French nuclear thinking: Macron repeated in his March 2 speech the French nuclear mantra that \u201crejects the idea of flexible nuclear response.\u201d<\/p>\n In the Franco-German context, both countries have emphasized<\/a> that forward deterrence will involve joint discussions \u201cto manage escalation beneath the nuclear threshold and to develop the necessary conventional capabilities,\u201d such as the \u201carticulation of conventional, Deep Precision Strike and missile defence capabilities with nuclear deterrence.\u201d For non-nuclear weapon states, this relationship between conventional and nuclear deterrence was always the crux of discussions within NATO. They feared either abandonment by their nuclear allies or, vice versa, entanglement in nuclear warfighting plans. It is therefore hard to imagine how debates on forward deterrence with France can be limited to conventional aspects of deterrence, without also involving discussions on nuclear doctrine.<\/p>\n And Europeans will have different views on when and how to use nuclear weapons, should deterrence fail. Some may push for more emphasis on escalation management that underlies NATO\u2019s doctrine; others may be more comfortable with the current French posture, which rejects the idea of nuclear warfighting.<\/p>\n For non-nuclear allies generally, however, this raises the question of whether their involvement in NATO nuclear sharing and forward deterrence may result in them simultaneously supporting two conflicting nuclear deterrence paradigms.<\/p>\n Zones of different security. European NATO non-nuclear allies have always been wary that the US extended deterrent could result in different zones of security in Europe, and avoiding uneven security on the continent has been a bedrock of the NATO alliance. The same concern appeared when Macron singled out a few European countries as partners.<\/p>\n Some NATO non-nuclear weapon states kindly but firmly declined the French invitation on forward deterrence, before Macron gave his speech, including the Baltic states<\/a>. Italy also declined the French offer to join, maybe because of the complicated relationship between its Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and pro-European Macron. Greece is the only NATO member on the Southern flank to join the initiative.<\/p>\n In his speech, Macron raised more questions than he gave answers about whether all of Europe would be covered when he said that the value of his initiative \u201cwill also be very strong for the partners who join us in this logic, and whose territory will gain an affirmed link with our deterrence.\u201d<\/p>\n The French Minister of the Armed Forces, Catherine Vautrin, clarified and expanded<\/a> on several points in Macron\u2019s nuclear speech in an interview on June 10. Of the European dimension of France\u2019s vital interests, Vautrin explained that France \u201cshould not limit this dimension to the eight partners with whom cooperation will develop under the \u2018forward deterrence\u2019 framework.\u201d<\/p>\n But questions remain.<\/p>\n Would France also be willing to deter attacks from countries south of NATO if its vital interests are not affected? How would Paris take the security interests of these countries into account, even if they cannot bring them up in a bilateral consultative mechanism with Paris?<\/p>\n Balancing, streamlining, and consolidating. President Macron repeated that France does \u201cnot take part\u201d in NATO\u2019s nuclear sharing arrangement, implying that Paris won\u2019t join the Nuclear Planning Group. But at the same time, France remains reluctant to institutionalize its initiative on forward deterrence by organizing multilateral meetings with some or all its partners because such gatherings could be perceived as competition to NATO\u2019s nuclear consultative apparatus.<\/p>\n For now, French diplomacy is stuck with managing the patchwork of nine bilateral nuclear dialogues. At the same time, Paris is discussing nuclear issues in regular consultations with its NATO nuclear allies, the United Kingdom, and the United States (collectively known as the P3) and, to a more limited degree, among the NPT nuclear weapon states (P5). France, therefore, has a number of nuclear dialogues comparable only to those of the United States.<\/p>\n Non-nuclear weapon states discuss nuclear deterrence in Europe without France in NATO\u2019s Nuclear Planning Group, and up to 11 of them have either joined the French initiative or signaled some interest in doing so. Out of the five non-nuclear NATO countries hosting US weapons, only the central European states of Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands joined the French initiative. Italy and Turkey did not join, adding another layer of complexity.<\/p>\n The result is a complicated web of interactions, bound to produce inconsistencies.<\/p>\n Seen positively, such multiple messages may add uncertainty and, therefore, caution on the side of the adversary. But the opposite is also true: Too much complexity can be detrimental to deterrence credibility. French scholar Etienne Marcuz correctly observes<\/a>: \u201cIf ambiguity is inherent to nuclear deterrence, it must not create confusion,\u201d because this could undercut signaling of resolve.<\/p>\n Some of the problems related to inequities among France\u2019s non-nuclear partners, institutional inconsistencies and political discrepancies could be alleviated by stronger coordination among them.<\/p>\n Non-nuclear partners in the forward deterrence initiative could meet regularly, without Paris, to debrief each other on their consultations with France and agree on a joint agenda to be taken up in their future respective bilateral meetings. It may appear counterintuitive to solve the problem of too many forums by adding another one. But better consultations among France\u2019s non-nuclear partners would have several advantages that outweigh the additional bureaucratic burden.<\/p>\n First, such meetings could make it easier for these countries to articulate their own security interests vis-\u00e0-vis Paris. Some may see this as unnecessary now. But it could become relevant should the April 2027 French Presidential elections bring a far-right candidate to power. Jordan Bardella, chair of France\u2019s National Rally party, which is leading in opinion polls, has indicated that he takes a much less benign approach<\/a> to France offering nuclear protection to its European partners. He said that \u201cbefore asking France to extend its nuclear umbrella, our European partners must stop buying [US-made]\u00a0F-35s and start buying [French-made] Rafales instead.\u201d Likely far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has also been critical of Macron\u2019s forward deterrence proposal, saying that \u201csharing [French] deterrence means abolishing it.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Macron is obviously concerned about such a power shift to the far right, too. The French government aims to consult with all non-nuclear partners on forward deterrence before March next year, when the campaign for the presidential elections enters its final stretch. The aim is clear: Paris wants to make it as difficult as possible for a potential far-right president to change the pro-European nuclear course Macron has set France and its partners on.<\/p>\n Closer coordination among France\u2019s non-nuclear partners would help them prepare for such a possible political shift in France.<\/p>\n Second, stronger coordination among the non-nuclear partners could increase trust among them. There is a risk that Paris treating these countries differently could give rise to suspicions and jealousy among partners. Regular consultations could help smooth such possible ruptures among France\u2019s partners and set them on a joint course.<\/p>\n Some of such coordination seems to be already emerging spontaneously: On March 2, Denmark and Sweden, for example, issued a joint press release<\/a> in reaction to France\u2019s initiative that emphasizes \u201cthe uniquely close cooperation between the Nordic and Baltic countries, with which we are in contact.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, the non-nuclear partners could, on a case-by-case basis, invite other NATO members to join their consultations as observers. Bringing Italy, Spain, or the Baltic states in, for example, would build a bridge to consultations in the Nuclear Planning Group and its senior advisory body, the High Level Group, where nuclear deterrence issues must be discussed with London and Washington.<\/p>\n