University of Virginia Library

National Nuclear Force

In the first instance, this policy required a
national nuclear force. General deGaulle has
argued that with the advent of a nuclear
statement between the Soviet Union and the
United States, an American nuclear guarantee
to Europe is not entirely credible. Would, it is
asked, Washington or Moscow risk national
suicide to preserve Europe. And the answer
given is not necessarily. Indeed, American talk
of a graduated response to Soviet provocation is
seen as indicative of Washington's reluctance to
extend an unqualified nuclear guarantee to
Europe. For graduated response implied if the
French die that conventional forces would
carry the brunt of a Soviet invasion. Moreover,
American insistence that the efficiency of the
alliance requires a specialization of effort -
that is that Europe provide the conventional
and the U.S. provide the nuclear forces - raises
the spectre of Washington, paralyzed by nuclear
stalemate, fighting the Soviet forces down to
the last European. Hence the necessity that
Europe - read France - be equipped with its
own nuclear force which, however small or
marginal, is held to be more credible than an
American nuclear guarantee. Only when survival
itself is at stake would the threat to employ
such weapons against a superpower be fully
credible. (This of course raises the question as
to whether a French nuclear guarantee to
Germany is any more credible than an American
guarantee to Europe.) And last of all,
deGaulle sees the possession of nuclear weapons
as the essential ticket for membership into the
great power club.

Secondly, France believes that Germany
must align its political will with that of France.
Ultimately this requires that Bonn choose
between Paris and Washington - and in a
subsidiary sense between Paris and London. A
divided Germany under obligation not to acquire
nuclear weapons and missile delivery
systems and still feared by many states east and
west cannot, it is argued, pursue an independent
foreign policy. Bonn has to a large degree
accepted this fact but drawn the conclusion
that it must act within the context of both
close German-American and Frano-German ties.