Force de dissuasion

The Force de dissuasion (French pronunciation: [fɔʁs də disɥazjɔ̃]; English: 'Deterrence Force'), known as the Force de frappe ([fɔʁs də fʁɑp]; 'Strike Force') prior to 1961, is the French nuclear deterrence force. The Force de dissuasion used to be a triad of air-, sea- and land-based nuclear weapons intended for deterrence. With the end of the Cold War, France decommissioned all its land-based nuclear missiles. The Force de dissuasion today is only an air- and sea-based arsenal. The French Nuclear Force, part of the French military, is the fourth largest nuclear-weapons force in the world, after the nuclear triads of the United States, the Russian Federation, and the People's Republic of China.

France's programme was shaped not only by the Cold War, but by the trauma that resulted from the Battle of France. General Pierre Marie Gallois, one of the architects of the deterrence force, is said to have been marked "by the tragic effects of an excess of German power" in his strategic thinking. France developed a military nuclear programme with the aim of retaining a strategic advantage over Germany. In 1961 Charles de Gaulle reminded John F. Kennedy that "Germany is legally prevented from having any [nuclear weapons]," adding that "the disadvantages deriving from German possession of atomic weapons would be far greater than the advantages."

On 27 January 1996, France conducted its last nuclear test in the South Pacific and then signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in September 1996. In March 2008, French President Nicolas Sarkozy confirmed reports giving the actual size of France's nuclear arsenal and announced that France would reduce its French Air Force-carried nuclear arsenal by 30%, leaving the Force de dissuasion with 290 warheads.

In addition to its nuclear military programme, France has a large civil nuclear programme and ranks as one of the world's largest generators of nuclear power.

The decision to arm France with nuclear weapons was made in 1954 by the administration of Prime Minister Pierre Mendès France under the Fourth Republic. President Charles de Gaulle, upon his return to power in 1958, solidified the initial vision into the well-defined concept of a fully independent Force de frappe that would be capable of protecting France from a Soviet or other foreign attack and independent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which de Gaulle considered to be too dominated by the United States. In particular, France was concerned that in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, the US, already bogged down in the Korean War and afraid of Soviet retaliation against the United States, would not come to the aid of its allies in Western Europe. De Gaulle felt that France should never entrust its defense and therefore its very existence to a foreign and thus unreliable protector.

The strategic concept behind the Force de frappe is one of countervalue, the capacity to inflict so much damage on a potential (and more powerful) adversary's population that the potential adversary will be deterred from attacking, no matter how much destruction it can inflict (mutual assured destruction). This principle is usually referred to in French political debate as dissuasion du faible au fort ("deterrence from the weak to the strong") and was summarized in a statement attributed to de Gaulle himself:

Within ten years, we shall have the means to kill 80 million Russians. I truly believe that one does not light-heartedly attack people who are able to kill 80 million Russians, even if one can kill 800 million French, that is if there were 800 million French.

General Pierre Marie Gallois said, "Making the most pessimistic assumptions, the French nuclear bombers could destroy ten Russian cities; and France is not a prize worthy of ten Russian cities".