Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have transformed the concept of nuclear deterrence. If Russia and the US did not hold 88 per cent of the world’s nuclear warheads, they could not attack other countries with impunity. If Ukraine had not given up its nuclear weapons, and if Iran had achieved its goal of obtaining them, they would probably have been spared their present torments.

As French president Emmanuel Macron put it in a landmark speech on March 2nd, “you have to be feared if you want to be free.”

Macron used the ballistic missile submarine Téméraire at the Ile Longue base in Brittany as a backdrop for his speech. In a few days, he noted, the submarine would “drop into total stealth and play its full role, from the depths, as the ultimate guardian of our freedom of action and our independence.”

The world has reached “a geopolitical tipping point fraught with risks,” Macron said. He enumerated Russia’s new weapons: hypersonic nuclear missiles, nuclear-powered missiles said to have unlimited range, nuclear torpedoes and even a project to put nuclear weapons in space. Added to that, the US has “reordered its priorities” – a gentle way of saying, as Charles de Gaulle predicted, that Washington can no longer be relied upon to protect its European allies.

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