@@ French President Jacques Chirac's nuclear faux pas @@
Arash
January 22, 2006
Chirac’s nuclear faux pas
Tehran -- Last Thursday, in an address to the crew of Le Vigilant, a French
submarine armed with nuclear weapons (http://tinyurl.com/dbunu), French President
Jacques Chirac displayed a terrible sense of theatrical humor, but, alas, no one is
laughing. Rather, everyone is shocked.
In a reversal of France’s longstanding nuclear doctrine, which had never envisioned
the possibility of a first strike and had always designated nuclear weapons as a
defensive option, Chirac said, “Leaders of any state that uses terrorist means
against us, as well as any that may be envisaging, in one way or another, using
weapons of mass destruction, must understand that they would be exposing themselves
to a firm and appropriate response on our behalf”.
The French president stunned the civilized world by announcing that his country would
consider using nuclear weapons against any country or nation deemed to have sponsored
a terrorist attack against it.
What has happened to the once relatively moderate and independent European country
and its leader, which only three years ago argued so convincingly in the UN against
intervention in Iraq without international consensus and due legal process?
Now the French president is telling the world that he could unleash nuclear weapons
on any country that supposedly aided or abetted terrorist activities on French soil.
This is the biggest nuclear bombshell that France has detonated since developing
advanced nuclear technology.
Most of France’s 350 nuclear warheads are based on submarines, which are always on
standby alert to deter aggressors from attacking France. The French allocate well
over 10% of their defense budget, over 3 billion euros ($3.62 billion) annually to
maintain their nuclear arsenal.
What a nuclear luxury for an indebted country!
With so much money being spent on a prestige weapon, straining the French economy,
and the Cold War over with no new enemy in sight, voices arose among the French
people calling for a reduction of this enormous non-productive expenditure, but then
Chirac found an imaginary enemy to threaten with nukes.
Until now, France only had the Cold War nuclear option of mutually assured
destruction (MAD), according to which the response to a first strike by an enemy
would be an overwhelming nuclear assault totally destroying the aggressor, which
would most likely respond by destroying the attacked country, too.
But today, with non-state actors conducting terrorist operations, the geopolitical
landscape has changed dramatically, making this option no longer feasible. Seeking a
credible nuclear deterrent for the modern era, Paris has adopted the threat of a
limited nuclear war using tactical nuclear weapons.
The odd thing about the whole situation is that these plans are astonishingly similar
to U.S. President George W. Bush’s ideas about mini-nukes and Washington's doctrine
of preemptive warfare.
Writer Paul Craig Roberts, who served in the Reagan administration as assistant
secretary of the treasury, put forward a worrying thesis recently that the U.S. might
decide to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states and quoted a Pentagon
document entitled "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations" (http://tinyurl.com/a559e),
which "calls for the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear adversaries in order
'to ensure success of U.S. and multi-national operations' ".
For some time there have been reports that the United States has been planning to
develop a new generation of tactical nuclear weapons in violation of the terms of the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and planned to team up with Israel to use the
so-called mini-nukes in ‘surgical strikes’ against states and non-state actors.
However, no one wanted to believe that any country could degrade itself to such an
extent that it would even consider using the most horrible weapons against anyone in
this day and age.
Yet, it seems that the unthinkable is now thinkable, with the United States and its
client states like France sinking to new depths of moral depravity.
And now, one of the countries of Rumsfeld’s "Old Europe" has taken a step further,
with France declaring that it would consider using nuclear weapons against countries
it believed were sponsors of terrorist acts against it. Imagine, had incidents
similar to the London or Madrid bombings taken place in Paris, Chirac would have
contemplated dropping one or two atom bombs on the country he believed was the
culprit.
In addition, due to its alliance with the U.S. in the so-called war on terrorism, if
some misguided elements explode a few hand grenades at the Eiffel Tower, the
Montparnasse Tower, the glass pyramid entrance to the Louvre, or the Arc de Triomphe,
dealing a blow to France’s grandeur and dignity, France might seek out rogue elements
in Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, or the uncontrolled tribal areas of Pakistan to use
‘smart’, ‘precise’ French nukes to obliterate them.
Chirac said the new military doctrine is designed to cope with an increasingly
dangerous and unpredictable world where the proliferation of chemical, biological,
radiological, and nuclear weapons could become the norm rather than the exception.
Indeed, it looks like Chirac himself is determined to make this the norm. Shortly
after winning the presidency in 1995, he ordered France's final nuclear tests in the
South Pacific.
With his second and probably final term as president nearing its end, Chirac has
formulated a dangerous military doctrine for France in the 21st century. Regardless
of whether Chirac leaves office next year or not, he will have left an indelible mark
on France's nuclear doctrine.
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