Abstract
In the recent developments and prospects for a further rapprochement between European countries in the realm of nuclear deterrence, France has appeared as a key but veiled player, mirroring the perceived ambivalence of French defence policy in the conventional realm. Thus, this communication assesses France's European defence policy through the lens of the links and linkages between conventional and nuclear cooperations projects. It proposes a history of the debates related to the europeanization of the French « force de frappe », reconnecting the rational for such initiatives with pending conventional cooperations, in order to contribute to a better understanding of France's European defence policy as a whole. Two sets of questions are addressed, based on a chrono-thematic approach: 1/ To what extent did the idea of a French- or Franco-British-led Euro-deterrent played a role in European conventional defence cooperations in the aftermath of the Cold War, whether under NATO/ESDI or EU/CSDP auspices? Did the relative marginalization of nuclear threat and nuclear issues in the 1990s and early 2000s shaped a permissive environment for conventional cooperations, or did it represent a “glass ceiling” for NATO-EU member states keen to preserve the strategic transatlantic “coupling”? 2/ To what extent, despite its “virtuality”, the debate on a Euro-deterrent, reemerging since the 2014 Crimean crisis, has “unearthed” three key issues for France, namely the articulation between conventional defence and deterrence, the participation to the Alliance deterrence policy reform, and the strategic and operational constraints weighing on a potential European component (whether in the realm of information sharing, consultation, planning or execution)? To address these questions, this paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach combining post-Cold War historical materials based on French archives (until 1995), an oral campaign of semi-directed interviews with an updated historiography.