Macron to visit top-secret sub base as some Europeans worry about US nuclear guarantees

Key Highlights

• For decades, Europe has lived under a protective umbrella of US nuclear weapons, stationed on the continent since the mid-1950s to deter the former Soviet Union and now Russia.
• Lately, however, some European politicians and defense analysts are questioning whether Washington can still be relied upon to use such force if needed.
• As the only nuclear-armed member of the 27-nation European Union, the questions are particularly pertinent for France.
• Possible revisions to France’s nuclear deterrence policy, sure to be carefully calibrated and scrutinized by allies and potential enemies alike, could be among the most consequential decisions that Macron makes in his remaining 14 months as president, before elections to choose his successor in 2027.
• That Macron feels a need to bare France’s nuclear teeth, in what will be the commander in chief’s second keynote speech laying out the country’s deterrence posture since his election in 2017, speaks to his concerns, voiced multiple times, about geopolitical and defense-technology shifts that threaten the security of France and its allies.