Strangelove told the American president in Stanley Kubrick's film of the same name, “Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy the fear of attacking.” With nuclear weapons, deterrence has become a strategy (involving planning) in which the fear of ultimate retaliation (often referred to as “unacceptable damage”) is central. [...] Any military effect that the use of nuclear weapons might have would be contingent on the achievement of a political objective: the restoration of deterrence and the end of conflict. [...] It can be applied in two different ways: the threatened response may be proportionate to the aggression (see the discussion of law and ethics below), but nuclear strategy is often based on the threat of damage proportionate to the stakes of the conflict, which may ultimately be the very existence of the country in the event of aggression by a nuclear-armed adversary. [...] In fact, the possession of a deterrent force contributes to the influence of the country's foreign policy: it reinforces the image of a power, and therefore of an independent diplomacy. [...] The definition of these interests is somewhat vague and is left to the discretion of the President of the Republic, but it is generally considered that the territory, population and sovereignty of France constitute the core of these interests.
- Pages
- 60
- Published in
- France
