The Great Nuclear Debate

At issue: the future of the French and British deterrents

Dec. 31, 1985: Frustrated by a six-year-old East-West diplomatic standoff over Afghanistan, the jittery post-Brezhnev leadership in Moscow sends ten Warsaw Pact tank divisions rumbling across the border into West Germany. Pushing back the outnumbered NATO forces, the invaders head for the French border. As the attacking army crosses the Rhine, the French President orders the use of tactical neutron bombs to protect his country's "territorial independence." In response, a Soviet-made SS-20 missile, armed with three nuclear warheads, rises from its silo in Poland and speeds toward Paris.

In Washington, the President is warned via the hot line that any nuclear intervention in Europe will result in a total thermonuclear assault on the U.S. After several agonizing seconds, the President decides that he cannot take the chance and refuses to order any of NATO'S missiles into action. Meanwhile, France and Britain launch submarine-based missiles targeted on Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev. The Soviets detect the oncoming attack, assume Washington has defied their ultimatum and unleash 50 ICBMs against the U.S. Given only 30 minutes warning, the President now has no choice. He pushes the button. World War III starts and ends within the hour. There are no victors.

Chilling scenarios like the one above underlie an urgent nuclear debate that is now taking place within the Atlantic Alliance in the face of the Soviet Union's alarming military buildup in Eastern Europe. Backing up its overwhelming superiority in conventional forces, the Warsaw Pact has also attained a 7-to-l edge over NATO in intermediate-range missiles; new Soviet-made SS-20s are being deployed at the dizzying rate of one every five days. Last December NATO agreed to install 572 U.S.-made Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe to offset the Soviet advantage. But the strategic parity between the superpowers--especially amid the tensions following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan--leads many Europeans to fear the possibility of a limited conflict on their own soil.

That is precisely the kind of devastating war that Continental leaders have always sought to avoid with the protection of the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Seven successive U.S. Presidents, including Jimmy Carter, have emphatically guaranteed that protection. Yet the widely perceived weakness of the present American leadership and the decline of U.S. nuclear superiority have again raised the unsettling question in Europe: Would Washington ever risk Chicago or New York for London or Paris? European worries about America's lack of commitment are surely exaggerated. Nonetheless, many defense experts on the Continent were duly impressed by Henry Kissinger's speech in Brussels ten months ago, in which he warned the European allies to look to their own nuclear defenses. Thus, the British and French deterrent forces, begun two decades ago largely as exercises in prestige, appear to have acquired a certain strategic justification.

Against this backdrop, a momentous debate is growing in France and Britain over the development and future role of the two nations' nuclear forces. The leaders of both countries must soon make crucial choices that will determine the shape of their own deterrents well past the year 2000. The increasing quantity and sophistication of Soviet weaponry threaten to render key parts of both countries' nuclear arsenals vulnerable to a first strike. Moreover, both face the awesome expense of modernization at a time when their economies are still suffering from widespread stagflation.

The French force de frappe is an almost sacrosanct institution, embodying Charles de Gaulle's demand 21 years ago that "French defense must remain French." But its three-pronged arsenal is fast losing credibility as a deterrent. The highly accurate new Soviet SS-20s, now numbering 150, could probably annihilate all of the 18 French medium-range (1,875 to 2,175 miles) ballistic missiles. Improved Soviet antiaircraft defenses also compromise the capacity of France's Mirage IV bombers to penetrate Soviet territory. Only the five French nuclear submarines, each carrying 16 M20 intermediate-range missiles, remain relatively safe from attack. According to French military sources, modernizing these systems will cost an estimated $20 billion at current values over the next decade.

Some basic decisions already have been made by Paris. A sixth nuclear submarine, named the Inflexible, will be added to the fleet. By 1985 the new sub will be equipped with 16 missiles, each carrying seven independently targetable warheads. President Valery Giscard d'Estaing is expected to announce plans for even more sophisticated submarines in September. He disclosed three weeks ago that the land-based French missile force will be moved out of its silos and mounted on mobile missile launchers. Meanwhile, the warheads on the 18 missiles are being upgraded from 150-kiloton to one-megaton size--a 567% increase in destructive power.

Beyond its strategic forces, France intends to beef up its tactical nuclear arsenal. The most significant decision in this domain will be whether or not to produce an Enhanced Radiation Weapon (ERW), commonly known as the neutron bomb (see box). General Pierre Gallois, a nuclear strategist and former military adviser to De Gaulle, has protested that adding this effective tactical weapon to the country's arsenal would amount to abandoning the French policy of massive retaliation in favor of the "flexible response" on which U.S. nuclear doctrine is based. The French military, which want the neutron device, respond that it is simply another tactical nuclear weapon.

Many Gaullists also suspect that the neutron warheads, which could theoretically be used in the defense of West Germany, would mean departing from De Gaulle's narrow precept of defense only of French soil. Giscard denies any breach of Gaullist military orthodoxy, but defense experts do detect signs of a shift in France's strategic emphasis. Says Pierre Lellouche, of France's Institute for International Relations: "Now that the U.S. commitment is in doubt, we just can't say we don't care what happens to Germany."

Most military experts expect that France will proceed with production of the neutron bomb, if only because a long delay might appear as backing down under Soviet disapproval. For once, if he proceeds, Giscard will have the backing of both his West German and U.S. allies. Pentagon sources feel that, if Western Europeans accept a French decision to make a neutron warhead, allied governments might be more willing eventually to accept the U.S. equivalent on their soil.

Some French military experts, including former Cabinet Minister Alexandre Sanguinetti and retired General Georges Buis, have called for the creation of a joint European nuclear defense program that would combine French know-how with West German financial resources. The obstacles to such cooperation remain almost insurmountable. The London agreements of 1954 concerning West German sovereignty and membership in NATO forever precluded the acquisition of atomic weapons by Bonn, and Moscow has made it clear that it would never tolerate a West German finger on the nuclear trigger. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt last week reiterated a long-standing West German promise that "we are not a nuclear power, nor do we intend to become one."

Britain's nuclear debate is less concerned with doctrine than with money. Specifically, the question is whether the British should buy 80 U.S.-built Trident missiles (range 4,350 miles) to replace the aging 2,880-mile Polaris in a modernized nuclear submarine force. The costs of the Tridents plus their British-made warheads and five new submarines are estimated at $10-billion, to be absorbed over 15 years. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's Tory government appears to be set on the Trident option, and the Iron Lady is expected to announce that decision to the Commons later this month. The announcement will probably spark strong opposition.

One prominent opponent of the government plan is Lord Carver, a distinguished scholar who commanded an armored brigade during World War II. He believes Britain's outdated nuclear force serves no useful military purpose and should be integrated into the NATO command. He can envision no circumstance under which Britain would launch, on its own, a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. Other critics argue that some form of nuclear independence should be maintained but call for cheaper alternatives.

One option would be to continue the Polaris system but build it around modernized warheads and the replacement of aging submarines. That scenario would not be feasible unless Lockheed, Polaris' builder, could be persuaded to keep its production line open to provide the missiles for the new Royal Navy subs. A second alternative is a system of cruise missiles that could be mounted on ships, Hovercraft or trucks. Proponents of this plan estimate that Britain could buy and arm 150 cruise missiles for less than $2 billion. The hitch is that the relatively slow-moving missiles are vulnerable to enemy air defense, according to some experts, and would be dependent on U.S. guidance technology to reach their targets.

What concerns military planners in both Britain and France is that the spiraling costs of nuclear modernization threaten to bankrupt conventional defense efforts. The British Army of the Rhine, for example, is undermanned and short of ammunition and tanks. Similarly, the state of French ground forces has been described as "catastrophic" by Le Monde's military expert Jacques Isnard, who claims that "they have only half the material they need." International Relations' Lellouche shares his concern, gloomily predicting that "conventional forces will have to be cut even more to pay for the nuclear investments."

For its part, Washington is pleased not only with Britain's apparent choice of Trident but also with the French decision to upgrade its force de frappe. "Independently of whatever the French doctrine may be," notes Gregory Flynn, a U.S. strategic expert at the Paris-based Atlantic Institute, "the existence of a French nuclear force is an additional factor of uncertainty for the Soviets." British Defense Secretary Francis Pym justifies the nuclear modernization policy on the same grounds: "Whereas [the Thatcher] government has absolute confidence in the U.S. commitment to Europe . . . a NATO defense containing these powerful independent elements is a harder one to predict and a more dangerous one to assail."

Some critics would answer that the modest size of those deterrent forces lack credibility in light of 1) the Soviets' overwhelming superiority and 2) the inability of the Europeans to agree on a truly unified defense policy. Beyond that, the independent British and French nuclear forces threaten to compromise future arms limitation talks. Soviet President Brezhnev has indicated a willingness to begin discussions with NATO on mutual reductions of European-based missiles. But he also insisted on the inclusion of British and French nukes in SALT III talks--if and when they get under way. Paris and London have given prior warning that they will not put their missiles on the bargaining table at SALT III. If this position holds, U.S. missiles might have to be traded off in their place, further weakening the American umbrella and driving a potential wedge between the U.S. and its allies. That would be an unfortunate and ironic result of Europe's search for a credible deterrent.

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