News Archives 2006
President of France threatens to use nuclear weapons against terrorist states
Jacques Chirac, France’s president, has threatened to use nuclear weapons against any
state that supported terrorism against his country or considered using weapons of mass
destruction.
In a high-profile speech to update military officers on France’s strategic doctrine,
Mr Chirac said the end of the cold war had removed neither the threats to peace nor the
justification for a nuclear deterrent.
Citing the dangers of regional instability, growing extremism and the proliferation of
nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, Mr Chirac said France’s nuclear deterrence
remained the fundamental guarantee of its security.
Although Mr Chirac conceded that the country’s nuclear arsenal could not deter
fanatical terrorists, he said it could help prevent states sponsoring those terrorists.
“The leaders of states who use terrorist means against us, as well as those who would
consider using, in one way or another, weapons of mass destruction, must understand that
they would lay themselves open to a firm and adapted response on our part,” he said.
“This response could be a conventional one. It could also be of a different
kind.”
Mr Chirac’s comments come in the midst of deteriorating European and American
relations with Iran, which last week indicated it would restart research into a nuclear
programme. Analysts said Mr Chirac’s comments could directly affect the ability to
negotiate a settlement with an increasingly belligerent Tehran.
“It expands the role of nuclear weapons and it makes it more difficult to argue
against an Iranian nuclear weapons programme,” said John Wolfsthal, a nuclear arms
expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It
reaffirms the discriminatory nature of the current system.” Opposition politicians in
France denounced Mr Chirac’s comments as irresponsible.
France, which acquired an autonomous nuclear deterrent in 1964, spends almost €3bn
($3.6bn, £2bn) a year, or just under 10 per cent of its defence budget, to maintain its
nuclear deterrent, including about 350 warheads. However, some politicians have questioned
its relevance and complained about its cost in a post-cold war world.
François Heisbourg, director of the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research, said
Mr Chirac was signalling that France’s nuclear weapons were now aimed at political
rather than demographic targets, the objective being to deter the command and control
capacity of rogue states rather than to threaten to annihilate cities in the old Soviet
bloc.
“This is a significant shift of emphasis that is made possible by the enhanced
accuracy of nuclear weapons,” he said. “It also pulls together the nuclear
deterrent with the issue of state-sponsored terrorism. That is a departure from the
traditional French stance, which has been to emphasise the general nature of its vital
interests.”
However, Mr Heisbourg said the new doctrine could raise a potential credibility problem
– what yardstick would be used to measure a response to a terrorist attack? He said
the president’s speech could also influence the international debate surrounding
Iran’s nuclear programme. “It is rather difficult to persuade someone to
renounce the acquisition of nuclear weapons when you are explaining how wonderful they can
be,” he said.
Mr Chirac said France’s nuclear deterrent also formed a “core element in the
security of the European continent” as the 25 members of the European Union developed
a common security and defence policy.
His warning that nuclear weapons could be used against terrorist states puts him more in
line with the US’s new controversial nuclear posture, unveiled in 2002, which also
cites nuclear arms as a credible deterrent to rogue states armed with non-conventional
weapons.
By John Thornhill in Paris and Peter Spiegel
in London
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