March 16, 2025 (EIRNS)—The City of London’s The Economist magazine welcomed that “Europe’s most profound nuclear debate since the 1950s” is now underway, by publishing a March 12 article proposing options for how Europe can overcome the two biggest obstacles to its wielding its own “eurobombs”: credibility and capability. The Brits are determined to whip up discussion of the “unthinkable.”
The idea of extended deterrence, where “one country must promise to use its nuclear forces—and thereby risk nuclear annihilation—on behalf of another,” is one difficulty, they confess. The U.K. adopted that policy by assigning its “modest” nuclear forces to the defense of NATO. Not so France—except, The Economist argues, when it implicitly extended its deterrence over the U.K. in 1995, when Britain and France agreed that “the vital interests of one could not be threatened without the vital interests of the other equally being at risk,” and over Germany, when the same language was adopted in 2019 in the Franco-German Aachen Treaty.
The question now is what those treaties mean in practice. For example: Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wants France to extend its nuclear protection over Poland, but hints that he wants launch authority also. The Economist views that as unlikely, but it reminds its readers that in the 1950s there was discussion of “a jointly owned and operated pan-European nuclear force,” and in the 1960s, “Britain proposed an Atlantic Nuclear Force that would put British and American nuclear forces under international command, with national vetoes.”
The Economist floats other options. Retired British defense official Peter Watkins proposes that France join NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group as an observer; “a punchier option would be for France to publicly clarify the European dimension of its interests,” The Economist suggests. Proposals by French nuclear expert Bruno Tertrais also interest London, including his idea “that France could simply make it clear that Article 42.7 of the Lisbon Treaty, the EU’s mutual-defense clause, `could be exercised by any means, thus including nuclear weapons.’”
How could spreading British and French nuclear bombs around Europe work? Submarines won’t work, but “planes are a different matter.” France already has invited other European nations to “associate” with French nuclear drills (take part through providing their conventional capabilities, such as refueling). That cooperation could be extended, by convening “a European nuclear maritime taskforce,” as Monsieur Tertrais has proposed.
The Economist, acknowledging that neither France nor the U.K. has nuclear capabilities of scale, pushes the idea of “a new Entente Cordiale” on the nuclear front, in which Britain and France agree to co-develop nuclear capabilities, while Sweden, Germany and other European nations step up participation in French nuclear exercises.
None of these proposals is convincing, even to their author. But what is unquestionably clear is that the Brits are determined to make Europe capable of waging nuclear war. Europe must be ready to fire nuclear missiles “at, presumably, Russian cities,” The Economist argues, if the United States won’t.
