As the U.S. retreats from its role as West’s nuclear protector, France looks to fill the void

Open this photo in gallery:

On a clear morning late last month, a Dassault Rafale fighter jet roared over the south of France carrying what looked to be a locked and loaded nuclear missile. The flight was timed for a moment when the French military knew Russian satellites would be passing over the Montpellier region.

That the Russians were watching as France test-fired one of its nuclear-capable cruise missiles was nothing new, as Paris almost always makes sure that Moscow can see what it’s capable of. What was unusual about the March 25 exercise was that the U.S. Air Force chose to fly a refuelling tanker over the length of France that morning, giving the Americans a bird’s-eye view as their French allies practised carrying out a nuclear strike on an unnamed adversary.

It was a reminder that France, too, is a formidable nuclear power and cannot be ignored.

“There’s a huge element of messaging,” said Étienne Marcuz, an expert on France’s nuclear forces, referring to both the French drill and the overflight by the U.S. tanker. “We don’t know if [the U.S. pilot] was monitoring the exercise, but we know that other countries, even our allies, are monitoring what we are doing.”

France’s nuclear arsenal – its 290 warheads make it the fourth-largest nuclear power in the world – is suddenly a hot topic in Europe. The continent is considering whether the French can step in and provide protection if the U.S. nuclear umbrella can no longer be relied upon with a seemingly hostile Trump administration in the White House.

Open this photo in gallery:

Talk of nuclear weapons has grown dramatically in Europe over the past three years, as Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly referenced his country’s arsenal during the war in Ukraine. Russia and the United States each have more than 5,000 warheads, while China, the third-largest nuclear power, is estimated to possess 600.

Unlike Britain, which has the fifth-largest arsenal but relies on the U.S. for maintenance and technical support, France’s nuclear deterrent has been kept completely independent. France can deploy nuclear weapons from the air as well as the sea, while Britain’s arsenal can only be fired by its four Trident nuclear submarines.

French President Emmanuel Macron says his country is willing to step in and fill the void if the U.S. is no longer willing.

“I’ve decided to open the strategic debate on the protection by our deterrence of our allies on the European continent,” Mr. Macron said in a March 6 video posted to his social media channels. “I want to believe that the United States will remain by our side, but we need to be ready if that were not the case.”

Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized the speech as revealing “Paris’s ambitions to become the nuclear patron of all of Europe” and warned that “this will not lead to strengthening the security of either France itself or its allies.” But European leaders including Polish President Donald Tusk and Friedrich Merz, Germany’s next chancellor, have indicated they would welcome France’s nuclear protection. Neither country has nuclear weapons.

Open this photo in gallery:

The debate over how Europe can defend itself gained added urgency after U.S. Vice-President JD Vance – in a leaked group chat among senior Trump administration officials about a military operation against Yemen’s Houthi rebels – wrote, “I just hate bailing Europe out again.”

Although U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted Thursday that the U.S. would remain in the NATO military alliance, many in Europe are preparing for exactly the opposite. The U.S. has an estimated 100 nuclear bombs stationed at NATO bases in Germany, Italy, Turkey, Belgium and the Netherlands. The fear is that if the U.S. leaves the alliance, it will take its nuclear shield home along with its troops.

The possibility of France losing its American ally was contemplated by former French president Charles de Gaulle as far back as 1959, when he decided his country needed a French-built, independent nuclear arsenal – even though the U.S. and the Soviet Union had established a Cold War balance of power that made war in Europe unthinkable.

Open this photo in gallery:

“Who can say whether, in the future … the two powers with a monopoly on nuclear weapons will not agree to divide the world between them?” Mr. de Gaulle once said. (China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea have joined the club of nuclear powers over the intervening decades.)

“Today, everybody, every politician, from the extreme left to the extreme right, is quoting Mr. de Gaulle, but at the time everybody was criticizing him,” said Guillaume Garnier, a former military engineer who is now an associate research fellow at IFRI, an international affairs think tank in Paris. “France’s nuclear deterrence is linked to France’s democracy. Only the elected president is supposed to have the legitimacy to press the button.”

That’s part of the debate now facing Europe. While U.S. and British nuclear protection was considered part of NATO’s Article 5 mutual-defence clause, France always kept its systems separate. One or more new security pacts may be required to reassure France’s allies that Paris can indeed fill the U.S. role.

Alain Richard, a former French defence minister, said the situation in Europe today reminds him of 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Warsaw Pact alliance suddenly ceased to exist, and the countries of the former communist bloc found themselves scrambling to make new security arrangements, with many eventually choosing to join their old adversary, NATO.

Mr. Richard said he expected Europe and Canada to maintain as many of NATO’s structures as possible, even if the U.S. and conceivably Turkey – another member state that has taken an authoritarian turn – withdrew.

But with the U.S. now providing more than half of NATO’s conventional firepower, there would be a need for France and Britain to provide a nuclear backstop for the shrunken alliance. And only France can offer that protection without U.S. help.

Mr. Richard said France offered to extend nuclear protection to its European allies several times in the past but was laughed off. “It seemed so unbalanced, so queer, to most of them, because they didn’t have any reason to doubt the American deterrent,” he said.

But it’s far from clear whether the rest of Europe is willing to accept France and Britain as the continent’s new leaders. “I can see two little elephants – France and the U.K. – who would think of themselves as leaders and be resented by all the others,” Mr. Richard said.

There’s also concern about the rise of the far right in French politics. Mr. Macron is barred from running again after his second term expires in 2027. Far-right firebrand Marine Le Pen was leading in most opinion polls before she was convicted last week on embezzlement charges and barred from running for office for the next five years.

Open this photo in gallery:

Ms. Le Pen, who is appealing her conviction, opposes extending France’s nuclear shield to its allies. “It must not be shared, let alone delegated,” she said last month.

Mr. Marcuz, the nuclear arms expert, said the possibility of Ms. Le Pen gaining control of France’s nuclear weapons gets raised regularly – and nervously – in his conversations with colleagues from other European countries.

Canada, meanwhile, rarely gets mentioned in the discussion of how Europe would defend itself without the U.S.

“We will have difficulties to protect ourselves against Russia without the U.S.A. So no, Canada can’t really be protected by Europe,” said Mr. Garnier, the former military engineer, referring to Europe’s conventional forces. He added, with a laugh, “The only thing that could protect you would be the nuclear deterrence of France and the United Kingdom.”

Mr. Marcuz said that’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. He pointed to last month’s highly publicized visit to Halifax by the Tourville, a French nuclear-powered attack submarine, amid Mr. Trump’s talk of annexing Canada.

The timing of the visit “might be a coincidence,” Mr. Marcuz said. “But the fact that they chose to talk about it – this is messaging too.”