France
Bruno Dive
Gaullism is now officially dead, said Bruno Dive in Bordeaux’s Sud-Ouest. President Jacques Chirac killed it last week with his “quasi-historic” change in France’s nuclear doctrine. France, Chirac declared, is prepared to use nuclear weapons not only against nuclear states, but against states that practice terrorism or use weapons of mass destruction. And the terrorist attack that draws such a response need not even be on French soil; it could be an attack on an ally or on a “strategic interest”—read: oil. With this surprise pronouncement, Chirac has definitively taken France away from “deterrence of weakness with strength,” and embarked it on a course of “deterrence of strength with madness.” He’s certainly put the world on notice that France still considers itself a great power. But back home, we’re left to wonder whether a country that has a 46 billion euro deficit each year can afford a 3.5 billion euro nuclear deterrent. Whoever replaces Chirac as president next year is sure to be “far less convinced than he of the primacy of nuclear weapons.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Jasveen Sangha and the ketamine 'Wild West' of HollywoodIn The Spotlight Arrest of the 'ketamine queen' accused of supplying Friends star Matthew Perry with deadly dose has turned spotlight on a showbiz drug problem
-
Confessions of a Brain Surgeon: an 'exceptional' documentaryThe Week Recommends Retired neurosurgeon Henry Marsh reflects on his pioneering work with exquisitely 'raw honesty'
-
A new subtype of diabetes was found and it may require different treatmentUnder the radar It is prevalent in Black Africans and Americans
