The French nuclear forces are ocean and air based. Thus they could easily cover the entire EU and the French have often asked other EU members to contribute to finance this expensive endeavor… with very little success.
But I don’t see much difference between France or any other EU member state. They are all densely populated and would suffer hugely from any kind of nuclear exchange. The entire point of nuclear weapons is that it never comes to that though, and the French nuclear weapons are well equipped as a deterrent due to a theoretical second strike capability.
Fine, yea, it’d be good to just chip in to get ready-to-go state-of-the-art coverage. Maybe they hold back because they don’t want to be so beholden to a single country like France at least until the US becomes completely unreliable.
The French nuclear forces are ocean and air based. Thus they could easily cover the entire EU and the French have often asked other EU members to contribute to finance this expensive endeavor… with very little success.
But I don’t see much difference between France or any other EU member state. They are all densely populated and would suffer hugely from any kind of nuclear exchange. The entire point of nuclear weapons is that it never comes to that though, and the French nuclear weapons are well equipped as a deterrent due to a theoretical second strike capability.
Fine, yea, it’d be good to just chip in to get ready-to-go state-of-the-art coverage. Maybe they hold back because they don’t want to be so beholden to a single country like France at least until the US becomes completely unreliable.