Abstract
The Gaullist nuclear legacy has undergone repeated change since the creation of the force de frappe in the 1960s.1 The early emphasis in French doctrine on the strict limitation of the French deterrent to the defense of the Hexagon gradually shifted to a stress on the contribution of French nuclear forces to European deterrence, a position officially recognized by NATO at Ottawa in 1974 and reaffirmed thereafter.2 The role of French conventional forces, while committed in French doctrinal thinking to testing enemy intentions before nuclear weapons were unleashed, was progressively enlarged in the 1970s to permit their engagement in a forward battle with allied conventional forces. In the 1980s the Socialist government of President Françis Mitterrand created a Rapid Action Force (FAR) to facilitate timely French cooperation with allied forces, principally those of Germany, in meeting a possible aggression from the East. Prestrategic nuclear forces were then quietly downplayed in deference to German concerns about their possible use against targets in Germany.
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Notes
Several works trace the evolution of French nuclear policy. In chronological order these include Wilfrid Kohl, French Nuclear Diplomacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971);
Edward A. Kolodziej, French International Policy under de Gaulle and Pompidou: The Politics of Grandeur (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), esp. 69–175;
Michael Harrison, The Reluctant Ally: France and Atlantic Security (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981);
and David S. Yost, France’s Deterrent Posture and Security in Europe, Part I: Capabilities and Doctrine, Adelphi Paper No. 194 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies [IISS], 1985), and Part 2: Strategic Arms Control Implications (London: IISS, 1985);
and Diego A. Ruiz Palmer, French Strategic Options in the 1990s, Adelphi Paper No. 260 (London: IISS, 1991).
John G. Mason, “Mitterrand, the Socialists, and French Nuclear Policy,” in French Security Policy in a Disarming World, ed. Philippe G. Le Prestre (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1989), pp. 49–84; Harrison, Reluctant Ally; and Gordon, A Certain Idea.
Jolyon Howoth, “François Mitterrand the ‘Domaine Réservé’: From Cohabitation to the Gulf War,” French Politics and Society 10:1 (Winter 1992): 43–58.
Heuré Deicher, “L’opinion publique française et les problèmes de défense en 1991,” Arès 13:5 (1991–1992): 83.
Superpower mediation is traced and analyzed in Roger E. Kanet and Edward A. Kolodziej, eds., The Cold War as Cooperation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).
These budgetary constraints and their implications for French military acquisitions policy and arms sales are developed in Edward A. Kolodziej, Making and Marketing Arms: The French Experience and Its Implications for the International System (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).
OECD, Economic Surveys: France (Paris: OECD, 1992), p. 157ff.
Patrice Buffotot, “Force politique et défence en France,” Arès 13:5 (1991–1992): 35.
Michel Paul, “L’Effort de défense et de securité de la France en 1992,” Arès 13:5 (1991–1992): 67.
This is the overall message of the works cited in n. 1. See also Robert Gilpin, France and the Rise of the Scientific State (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968).
Samy Cohen, La monarchie nucléaire: Les coulisse de la politique etrangére sous la Ve République (Paris: Hachette, 1986).
For a brief review of the WEU’s revitalization, see Alfred Cahen, The Western European Union and NATO (London: Brassey’s, 1989).
French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, La politique étrangère de la France, textes et documents (Paris: Documentation francaise, 2ième trimestre, 1978), p. 66.
Pierre Lellouche, “France in Search of Security,” Foreign Affairs 72:2 (Spring 1993): 127.
Karl Deutsch et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957).
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© 1994 Center for Strategic and International Studies
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Kolodziej, E.A. (1994). French Nuclear Policy: Adapting the Gaullist Legacy to the Post-Cold War World. In: Mazarr, M.J., Lennon, A.T. (eds) Toward a Nuclear Peace. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-60793-8_9
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