France defines new role as EU’S only nuclear power

Macron suggests joint European ‘nuclear war games’ as tensions rise in US, China and Russia

FRANCE will take the lead on deterrence as the EU’S only nuclear power after Brexit, Emmanuel Macron has declared in a tub-thumping speech in Paris to French defence chiefs.

While the UK’S departure from the EU “changes nothing” in the country’s nuclear defence pact with Britain, the French president called for a closer European defence strategy under the umbrella of his nation’s nuclear arsenal.

France’s independent deterrent, initiated by Charles de Gaulle and confirmed by French presidents since, remains, said Mr Macron, the cornerstone of national defence along with conventional forces.

But given the “unbreakable” solidarity between EU nations, the “vital interests of France now have a European dimension”, he told military officers in a speech at the Ecole de Guerre laying out France’s post-brexit nuclear strategy.

While there was no question of France surrendering its nuclear deterrent to EU or Nato command as suggested by a German politician recently, Mr Macron raised the possibility of EU states joining in its nuclear “war games”.

Elysee officials said while there would be no “sharing” of French deterrence, the idea was to “talk and deepen Europeans’ joint strategic culture”. But

Henri Bentégeat, a former French chief of defence staff, asked: “Who decides that our vital interests are under threat? Knowing that the French president can decide alone is a major sticking point,” he told Le Monde.

Mr Macron did not specify whether Britain should be part of the strategic cooperation but noted that “since 1995, France and the UK have stated clearly there is no situation in which a threat to one’s vital interests would not also be a threat to the other’s”.

He added: “Brexit changes nothing in this regard.” He also urged European nations not to “remain spectators” in the face of a potential nuclear arms race, amid notable tensions between America, China and Russia.

“Europeans must realise collectively that in the absence of a legal framework they could rapidly face a new race for conventional weapons, even nuclear weapons, on their own soil,” he said.

Both Washington and Moscow have abandoned the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the US has indicated it will not extend New

START, an arms reduction treaty signed in 2010, when it expires in 2021.

Given this, Mr Macron warned of “the possibility of a pure and unrestrained military and nuclear competition, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the end of the 1960s”.

Weeks after irking Western allies by declaring Nato “brain dead”, Mr Macron insisted France remained a committed member of the alliance but that “our security also depends, inevitably, on a greater capacity for autonomous action by Europeans”.