Published on La Porta di Vetro, 9 March 2026
https://www.laportadivetro.com/post/crolla-l-ordine-mondiale-avanza-la-neo-dottrina-nucleare-francese
On 2 March, French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a speech at the Île Longue naval base in Brittany, announcing major changes to France’s nuclear doctrine.
The international context in which this decision is being made is marked by the collapse of the liberal world order in favour of a competitive multipolar system, characterised by the return of nineteenth‑century power politics. The network of agreements that, in the second half of the twentieth century, facilitated non‑proliferation and even the reduction of nuclear arsenals through reciprocal controls and transparency has definitively fallen apart – also formally, as the relevant treaties have expired.
In this scenario, unilaterally adhering to a set of limits and transparency rules, while the rest of the world is expanding its nuclear stockpiles and several new countries are considering launching military‑oriented nuclear programmes, becomes an extremely difficult choice. If the goal is to ensure the State’s security, freedom, and independence, the return of a global “jungle” forces decisions that only a few years ago would have seemed unthinkable.
Macron announced that the new French nuclear deterrence doctrine includes:
increasing the number of available nuclear warheads;
ending the publication of data concerning the French arsenal, introducing a level of strategic ambiguity that becomes once again a pillar of effective deterrence in the absence of coordinated policies of reciprocal control among nuclear powers;
keeping political decision‑making on nuclear matters in the hands of the French Presidency;
extending the French nuclear umbrella to other European partners, currently: the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Poland and Sweden.
On the same day, Macron and German Chancellor Merz issued a joint declaration announcing closer cooperation in the field of nuclear deterrence, in response to the threats posed by the new global environment and with the awareness that nuclear deterrence remains a cornerstone of Europe’s security architecture. Germany will begin participating in French exercises and gain access to joint visits to strategic sites. The statement makes clear that French deterrence remains embedded in, and coordinated with, the NATO framework (i.e., with the UK and the US), implicitly reaffirming that there is no intention to replace the American umbrella with a French one, but rather to consider them integrated.
It became evident that even a democratic country animated by the best intentions (assuming our French partner fits this description) cannot avoid acknowledging the new threats emerging from a world in which empires and power politics are returning. This reminds us that nuclear security depends on the behaviour of all relevant global actors — it is a global public good. The failure to pursue policies of coordination, reduction and control hangs like a sword of Damocles not only over European citizens, but over all people around the world.
The weakening of international organisations and of the rules‑based world order — long accused of unduly limiting national sovereignty and threatening democracy — is leading us into a new era of war and instability, where it is precisely the freedom of peoples and democracy that are at risk. Yet if the twentieth century taught us anything, it is that a world divided into sovereign nation‑states structurally leads to war.
We are light‑years away from the decades in which “disarmament” was the key word, but also from the more recent era when Macron, speaking at the Sorbonne in 2017, launched his major initiative to build a stronger, more united Europe. Today, the vision emerging from the Élysée is of a Europe in which France provides security to others, rather than one capable of building a common security system in which political decisions are taken at the European level by European citizens and Member States.