Macron’s Historic Nuke Offer Gets Cautious Praise
France is willing to extend its nuclear umbrella but some European countries remain skeptical.
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Bonjour et Bienvenue to the Paris Edition. I’m Bloomberg Opinion columnist Lionel Laurent. If you haven’t yet, subscribe now to the Paris Edition newsletter.
To be free, one must be feared. That’s what Emmanuel Macron told ministers and military top brass this week at the French base for nuclear submarines at Ile Longue, as he unveiled a historic step toward bolstering France’s atomic arsenal and offering nuclear arms cooperation to European partners. In a West where American abandonment is no longer a speculative what-if, the nuclear question has become absolutely central. Yet it will also require some tough political and funding trade-offs.