At the NATO Summit in Lisbon on 20 November 2010, France agreed to the construction of a NATO anti-ballistic missile (ABM) shield as a complement to nuclear deterrence. Was this the right response to the strategic uncertainties of the twenty-first century? Have the Europeans fully understood the significance of the new strategic posture set in place by the United States, with their ABM shield and their nuclear force?

The New Strategic Situation

The arrival of the twenty-first century heralded a new set of geopolitical rules. The world is now so confronted by a wealth-generating technological revolution, fierce competition over energy resources, increasing tension caused by food supply and ecological issues, the birth of new powers and the growing pressure from huge political and spiritual groups armed with weapons of mass destruction, that we can no longer think of it in balance. We might well ask ourselves, as Charles de Gaulle did in 1932, what we should do to stabilise frontiers and powers if these developments continue. At the time of de Gaulle’s book, Fil de l’épée, the world supported 2 billion inhabitants: that figure is now up to 7 billion and will soon reach 8 billion. And yet throughout the 80 years since then, has man been silent over the demands, passions and interests from which armed conflict is born? Has anyone willingly given up what he has and desires – indeed, has man finally ceased to be human? 

       Since 1945, and the creation of the Bomb, weapons of mass destruction have succeeded in radically altering the classical concept of warfare: since genocide cannot be an acceptable derivative of a reasoned policy, military strategy has been defined as a function of the mere existence of the Bomb. Having started its reign as the ultimate weapon of war, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Bomb became a weapon of cold peace once its original owner lost the monopoly to another antagonist. In maintaining the status quo between nuclear powers for half a century, it is paradoxical that the apocalyptic power of the Bomb led to the single political aim worthy of it: it acted by dint of its potential, leaving the battlefield to other, more limited forms of violence. But now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, we see a new strategic order, which incorporates new players. In spite of the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), several new states have acquired nuclear weapons and others are appearing on the horizon, carried along by the wave of proliferation. Given this, and given what we have lived through, are we in any position to declare some universal law relating to the Bomb, that it inevitably leads to a political rationality among those who have it, or who soon will, which alone guarantees some limitation to resorting to extreme measures? It would be highly imprudent to believe so.