El País, 23 Dec 2010.

Sarkozy is afraid that Obama’s proposal of a world free of nuclear weapons will force to eliminate French deterrence force.

Obama’s administration has found in Nicolas Sarkozy “the most proamerican French president since World War II” and United States’ and France’s interests coincide in many fronts as Afghanistan, Iran and Middle East, as American diplomatic correspondence, up to now secret, has manifested, but there is an issue in which both countries disagree bluntly: Paris does not want to know anything about the nuclear disarmament agenda of the White House. Obama’s call on April 2009 in El Cairo in favor of “a world free of nuclear weapons” did not pleased the Elysées, which is afraid that this policy might end up “delegitimizing” the French deterrence force, a strategic identity symbol of the republic founded by De Gaulle.

France’s return to the hard core of NATO last year confirmed Paris’ new will for becoming a key ally of Washington, but not to the point of making concessions on its nuclear arsenal.

François Richier, Strategic Affairs advisor of the Elysées, stated this clearly to American diplomats during a conversation sustained in October 2009. Richier warned that U.S. cannot impose a “demonization” of atomic weapons, being the deterrence they produce a central part in French identity. Therefore, he affirms, France will reject any suggestion for joining multilateral talks for nuclear weapons reductions – “If you ask, we will say no!” – and establishes that this matter will be a red line in bilateral relations.

In addition to this, Celine Jurgensen, official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, warned the Americans against any possibility that further negotiations of the New START between U.S.A. and Russia – which was ratified on December 22nd by the American Senate – would extend to other nuclear powers.

U.S.’ diplomacy tries to ease French fears, being aware of Paris capacity to “block” other key policies of Obama’s administration like nuclear nonproliferation. Despite this, counsellor Richier warned Under Secretary of State for Arms Control, Ellen Tauscher, in February 2010 against “any inopportune shift in U.S. declarations that may indicate the intention of inserting the same policies [of nuclear disarmament] in the Strategic Concept of NATO”, which was under revision in that moment and which was finally approved on last November at the Alliance’s Lisbon Summit. Richier said, according to the diplomatic dispatch, that “an attempt of this type could have consequences on France’s capacity for integrating its nuclear forces to NATO”. A possibility never made public before by French officials.

The French “obsession” for its nuclear arsenal, as described by the cables of the U.S. Embassy in Paris, is also showed in the European anti-missile shield projected by Obama’s administration. Paris supports the plan with reticence and puts forward two concerns: its cost and, above all, how it will affect its force de frappe. French officials insist that the shield might “complete” its deterrence force but never “substitute” it.

The former French Minister of Defense, Herve Morin, expressed in a very explicit way his reserves against the anti-missile shield in a meal with Pentagon Director, Robert Gates, held in Paris on February 8th 2010. According to a classified report of the Embassy about the meeting, Morin stated that the shield “will give the public a false sense of security”, he wondered what threats it pretended to repel whether “nuclear states or irresponsible states” and “how will European countries participate in the decision making and its command and control”.

The minister also wondered about how was it going to be financed as “the European Defense expenditure has dropped in every country but United Kingdom and France”, and concluded declaring that it was “crazy to assume that the anti-missile shield would give us more security”. Gates refute his arguments and reminded him that President Obama wanted to have a decision affirming the role of NATO in the shield during the Lisbon summit, as it happened. The cable adds a final note: “The harsh commentaries of Morin were discredited by high officials of the Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs, which said that his opinions were exclusively personal and that the U.S. should “erase” everything he had said”. Morin ceased to be minister a month ago.

The French interest in keeping its atomic arsenal safe was manifested also in the discussions around the revision of NATO’s new strategic doctrine. Paris succeeded in making the Alliance reject Germany’s and other countries’ initiative on dismantling more than 200 obsolete American atomic bombs in European soil and managed to get NATO to define itself again as a nuclear alliance. A secret document from the Secretary of State from February 17th 2010 informed that France is not willing to a “new wording on the Treaty of Washington” and wants a version “as close as possible to the Strategic Concept of 1999 in everything relative to NATO’s nuclear issues”. At the end, Sarkozy scored at the Lisbon summit but the game has just begun.

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