To be free, one must be feared

While the United States and Israel were bombing Iran on Saturday, Emmanuel Macron was giving a 45-minute speech in front of a nuclear submarine at the Île-Longue base in Brittany. He announced the first increase in France's nuclear arsenal since at least 1992, the possibility of temporarily deploying nuclear-armed aircraft to allied countries, and that France would no longer disclose the size of its stockpile. "To be free, one must be feared," he said. The speech, French officials stressed, had been planned before the war. Maybe so. But the timing made it sound like a reaction.

France and Germany issued a joint statement creating a "high-ranking nuclear steering group." Germany would participate in French nuclear exercises with conventional forces. Macron also spoke of long-range missile projects with London and Berlin. On Monday, alongside Starmer and Merz, he condemned Iranian attacks and announced readiness to "destroy Iran's capability to fire missiles and drones at their source". Today, France sent Rafales to patrol over its bases in the UAE, deployed anti-drone systems to Cyprus, and confirmed that a drone had damaged a hangar at its naval base in Abu Dhabi.

Some perspective. France has a defence budget of €57 billion, the largest in the European Union. It has an estimated 290 nuclear warheads. It is a permanent member of the Security Council. And its concrete operational response to the largest military crisis in the Middle East since 2003 was to send a frigate to Cyprus and patrol the skies above its own bases. There is a gap between rhetoric and power projection that no speech in front of a submarine will close. France is the foremost military power of a bloc that cannot defend itself without the United States. Macron knows this. That is why he spoke of being feared. The problem is that a nuclear arsenal deters nuclear wars; what is needed right now are aircraft, missiles and the will to use them. Of that, Europe has very little.