France is one of the highly developed states of modernity, which has a rather significant impact on the security configuration and balance of power not only in Europe, but also in the world today.Enormous trials fell upon it in the first half of the 20th century. The events of the two world wars directly affected the political elite, forcing it to change its views on ways to ensure national and international security. The tragic defeat in the Second World War shook the traditional French pacifism, limited the independence of foreign policy decisions, and demonstrated the inability of France to take a leading place in Europe in the confrontation with Nazi Germany.

At the same time, the bitter experience of defeats formed a peculiar approach to future development. The leaders of the post-war country, particularly the Fifth Republic, sought and achieved long-term consistency and continuity of the growth of the state’s influence not only in Europe, but also in the world. All this idears are the part of the national political strategy today. The justification for France’s globalism is both its status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and its powerful nuclear potential.

Traditionally, the objective sources of the issue under study were domestic and international documents in the security sphere. Domestic documents include: the Constitution of France, the country’s foreign policy concept, the “White Papers” on defense and security, the Concept of the Use of Force (1982 and 1997), the inter-military doctrine of the operational use of force of the French General Staff (1999), laws on the development of the country’s armed forces (Law No. 96-589, July 2, 1996 on the development of the armed forces in 1997-2002) and decisions on the military budget of France and so on. 

Among the international documents, the Treaty on European Union (Maastricht, ratified in 1993), the Treaties of Amsterdam and Nice, and the new NATO strategic concept adopted at the Alliance’s anniversary summit in Washington in 1999 should be mentioned. The decisions on the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) were particular interest (1999, Helsinki), the decisions on the Common European Security and Defense Policy adopted in Lisbon in March 2000, as well as other documents of EU, in which France is an active participant.

         It should also be taken into account that the French national traditions on national security coincide with the American ones in terms of their ideological coloring. The latter is explained by the traditional historical and literary culture of French diplomacy: Rousseau, Voltaire, Chateaubriand, Stendhal and other famous writers were in the foreign service at one time, as well as by the country’s deep revolutionary traditions. Since national traditions are largely dependent on political practice, the concept of national security in France is, in fact, determined by the ideological guidelines of the national doctrine. In other words, for France, the fundamental factors of the security dimension were and remain globalism, European space and Eurocentrism. But perhaps the key factors in the post-war decades and the modern period for official Paris are the factors of the global approach. 

The French understanding of security encompasses aspects of sustainability of action – the protection of one’s own territory at any time, and global action – includes all military means and non-military aspects of protecting the country from possible aggression. The initial conceptualization of the global and European approaches, the heredity and strategic vision largely depended on the political context associated with the return of General de Gaulle to power in 1958. The European perimeter, being one of the important ones in the policy of the republic, justifies the need for France’s participation, its responsibility for the formation of a regional order in the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Middle East. Accordingly, Eurocentrism determines the special importance of the security situation in Europe and the participation of Paris in European affairs, where France traditionally considers itself a regional leader, while restraining the European appetites of the USA, Great Britain (Anglo-Saxon group), Germany, and in some cases Moscow. All theoretical developments had and have the appropriate legislative consolidation of the French state. 

Given the above topic, the authors focused on the components of France’s nuclear security in the context of its policy of globalism and strengthening its positions in the international community. After all, France established itself as a powerful state that has a powerful influence on the security configuration and balance of power not only in Europe, but also in the surrounding world, in all fateful periods of modern civilization. 

Without going into details, we note that the post-war development of Europe is connected and in many ways caused by the policies of prominent personalities of the leading countries. And among them, a special place and role belonged to the President of France, Charles de Gaulle. Even the concept of “Haulism” has forever entered political history and has taken a leading place in the European and world landscape of political transformations and innovations in international relations. It is thanks to or in spite of Gaullistism that the corresponding balance in international relations was formed, and the process of European integration took place according to a well-known, already implemented scenario. Without a doubt, General de Gaulle shaped France, brought it to leading European and world positions. He saw his main calling in the accelerated restoration of France’s greatness on the international arena, which had been plundered by Hitler’s Germany. President de Gaulle persistently promoted the restructuring and modernization of the national economy in accordance with the requirements of the scientific and technological revolution, which became the key to the revival of the state’s power and was aimed at strongly encouraging the economic and political expansion of France. Gaullistism contributed to the decisive activation of French foreign policy, trying to weaken the positions of the USA and Great Britain.

Another aspect of the president’s course was the orientation towards strengthening the Western European component of French policy and undoubted leadership in the region. It is no coincidence that France became an active supporter of Franco-German reconciliation and the formation of a united Europe. The results were not long in coming: France became one of the most developed countries in the world in terms of generalized social indicators: national income per capita, healthcare spending, education level, life expectancy, etc. Modern France has implemented one of the most advanced social protection systems, which contributed to the improvement of the demographic situation in the country.

However, the specific course of events on the continent of the post-war decades had its own imperatives. The bipolar confrontation of the opposing blocs during the Cold War dictated the appropriate behavior of their participants.

The situation was indicative that France was not satisfied with the American nuclear umbrella, but actually managed to develop its own nuclear potential. Most researchers deduce the motivations for this approach of Paris from the fears and reluctance of General Charles de Gaulle to be drawn into a possible nuclear conflict between the USA and the USSR. On the other hand, this decision may also be associated with the struggle for leadership in Europe with Great Britain. This is indirectly confirmed by the negative assessments by the French leadership of the policy of this country, which was equipped with American nuclear warheads and therefore dependent on the US nuclear strategy.

And another, perhaps the most important incentive was Paris’s efforts to make France the first of the first not only in Europe, but also in the world. After all, France independently created its own strong nuclear potential and is rightly proud of this achievement.

The leadership of the Fifth Republic, headed by de Gaulle, beyond purely ideological and strategic considerations of security and protection of sovereignty of France, considered nuclear weapons as an instrument for the implementation of national foreign policy goals. The French nuclear doctrine was developed by leading military theorists, such as generals P. Gallois, L. Poirier and Admiral A. Sanginetti. The conceptual provisions of the national security doctrine called “weak deterrence of the strong” consisted in the belief that a militarily weak state possessing nuclear potential can, by threatening to use it, deter a strong aggressor from unleashing a war or conflict. This concept, as it turns out, is still relevant today.

In the foreign policy sphere, the French doctrine had a clearly expressed anti-Soviet orientation, and in the domestic dimension – the absolute priority of national nuclear forces in military construction, which ultimately led to France’s independence from NATO power.

The military-political leadership of France defined the main goal for its strategic nuclear forces – deterrence of war. As a possible form of application of nuclear forces, the tactic of delivering a massive nuclear strike by all available carriers (the “all or nothing” concept) to the enemy’s industrial potential (the “strike on cities” concept) was chosen. By the end of 1956, all the necessary structures for the implementation of the nuclear military-political project had been formed in France and a corresponding state program for 1957–1961 had been adopted. The latter provided for uninterrupted financing of all theoretical and practical developments. 

The promotion of the French nuclear project was largely facilitated by the new Constitution adopted in 1958, the provisions of which significantly expanded the rights of the President of the French Republic. The nuclear potential became the pride of General de Gaulle – an ardent supporter of France’s nuclear independence. November 3, 1959 at the Center for Advanced Military Studies, de Gaulle declared that the main goal of France’s nuclear program was to create a national strike force based on nuclear weapons that could be deployed anywhere in the world. On February 13, 1960, a powerful explosion (60–70 kt) at the Reagan test site convincingly confirmed the entry of the French Republic into the circle of the “club of nuclear powers”. As a result, Paris’s policy on the development of atomic weapons brought closer the solution to the task of strengthening France’s influence on the international arena in the status of a major world power. The concept of “purism” contributed most successfully to these guidelines. It absorbed a system of conceptual views and practical recommendations that in the late 1950s advocated the principles of nuclear nationalism (the deterrence through purification model). An exceptional feature of the purists was the desire to find a deterrence formula that would enable the weaker to deter the stronger.

The policy of nuclear nationalism led to France’s withdrawal from the NATO military structure. France rejected the American strategy of “flexible response”, which since 1962 has become the official doctrine of the Alliance. Paris also refused to sign the “Nassau Pact”, approved in December 1962 by US President J. Kennedy and British Prime Minister H. Macmillan. The essence of this document was to maintain parity between Great Britain and France in NATO’s nuclear policy and to gradually integrate the nuclear potentials of these states into the nuclear forces of the United States under the command of the Alliance.

In fact, the general’s position gave impetus to the process of détente in Europe and the world, the search for a compromise between the two antagonistic camps, the exchange of visits at the highest level, the signing of the first interstate French-Soviet treaties of friendship, etc. Such a policy in the long term contributed to the formation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE/OSCE).

Chekalenko L., Kudriachenko A.

 Institute of World History of NAS of Ukraine