Macron highlights France’s nuclear arsenal in support of Ukraine

European powers should not allow the United States to impose limits on their support for Ukraine, according to French President Emmanuel Macron, who invoked his country’s nuclear weapons arsenal as a basis for staring down Russia.

“We’re in a situation where we’re not quite sure about the European limits — why should others, other continents, tell us where our limits are?” Macron said during a wide-ranging speech at Sorbonne University, according to a France24 interpreter. “It’s a question of the security of Europe — are we prepared for that? No. We have to become credible and we have to be present and act as a force of deterrence. And this involves nuclear forces.”

Macron’s remarks, a thinly veiled challenge to President Joe Biden’s judgments about how to balance aid for Ukraine against the potential for escalation between NATO and Russia, came amid a wider warning that Europe faces a series of possible economic and security crises. He warned that “European civilization” depends on its ability to revise the assumptions that underpin domestic and defense policies, in light of rising nuclear threats and the intensifying competition between the United States and China.

“Well, Europe is mortal,” Macron said. “It can die. And, it only depends on our choices. These choices have to be made now. We’ve woken up, we’ve doubled our defense budgets, France has … but this awakening is still rather slow. There’s an acceleration in the world.”

The second-term president argued that “to make Europe something that’s not going to disappear,” the nations of the continent would have to coordinate to develop economic and security independence. The address offered a reprisal of Macron’s long-standing desire for “strategic autonomy,” an idea that met with U.S. irritation and Central European mistrust during his first term.

“We need to make sure that we can build partnerships with third countries — that is to say, building a Europe that can show that it’s never going to be, let’s say, the lap dog of the United States,” he said.

That aspiration was rebuffed in 2020 by Central and Eastern European allies mistrustful of France’s ability to replace the United States as the leading security guarantor on the continent. At the time, Macron’s reference to France’s nuclear arsenal seemed to violate a “nuclear taboo,” as Poland’s then-foreign minister put it. In the midst of a war in which Russia’s nuclear threats have become commonplace, Macron returned to that theme.

“We know that nuclear defense is something that is absolutely vital for France and therefore vital for Europe, too,” he said. “It’s thanks to this critical defense system that we will be able to actually have security guarantees that all of our partners are expecting. And this will also help us to set out a common security framework.”

And Macron pointed to the war in Ukraine as a conflict in which European allies must have the independence to pursue security policies that go beyond U.S. preferences.

“After the Russian aggression, we will see that Moldova and Ukraine have been seen as part of our European family,” he said, adding later that “Europe needs to be able to protect what is dear to it, alongside its allies, anyone who wants to stand by us, or alone, if necessary.”

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

That ambition will require major investments in European defense industries, he said.

“We have to transform the kind of just-in-time emergency measures set up for Ukraine into something more long-term,” he said. “Of course, the road will be long because we are suffering from decades of underinvestment in this area. … We have not invested in this area when we should have and that’s why we depend so heavily on external actors. … So we need to make sure that we produce ourselves.”