PARIS — President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday that he will cut France’s nuclear arsenal to fewer than 300 warheads, seeking to balance the defense of the nation — he mentioned the threat from Iran — against budgetary and strategic considerations.
In his first major speech as president on the French deterrent, Sarkozy also urged the United States and China to commit fully to a treaty banning tests of nuclear weapons.
In addition, Sarkozy shifted somewhat from the nuclear doctrine of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, by being slightly more ambiguous about the circumstances that might lead France to employ its nuclear weapons.
Sarkozy’s decision to reveal the rough size of France’s arsenal — the Defense Ministry said the exact number of warheads is still secret — appeared aimed at prodding other nuclear powers to be equally transparent.
Many of France’s nuclear weapons are carried aboard submarines, with the rest on warplanes. Sarkozy said the airborne component would be cut by one-third, specifying that that included nuclear weapons, missiles and planes.
“After this reduction, our arsenal will include fewer than 300 nuclear warheads,” he said. “That is half the maximum number of warheads that we had during the Cold War.”
France’s airborne nuclear weapons are carried by three air force squadrons of Mirage 2000N and another navy flotilla of upgraded Super Etendard jets. They are all to be replaced by high-tech Rafale jets, in air force and navy versions.
French defense expert Francois Heisbourg said the air fleet modernization allowed the size of the arsenal to be trimmed.
“When you have better planes taking over for older planes, you can afford to reduce the numbers,” said Heisbourg, special adviser to the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research think-tank.
The Federation of American Scientists, which tracks nuclear arsenals around the globe, said in a status report for 2008 that France had 348 strategic nuclear weapons. It lists 193 for China and 160 for Britain, all far less than the United States, with 3,575, and Russia, with 3,239.
Sarkozy gave his speech in the northern port of Cherbourg to personnel building a nuclear submarine, The Terrible, the fourth in a new generation of nuclear-powered and armed French subs. The Terrible will undergo tests in the Atlantic in 2009 and go into service a year after that, carrying new M51 nuclear missiles with multiple warheads and a longer range than current missiles.
Since Sarkozy is France’s first leader born after World War II, his reaffirmation of the need for nuclear weapons, despite France’s budgetary difficulties, was significant. It marked a continuation of French policy despite a generational shift in political leadership.
He called the nuclear arsenal “the nation’s life insurance.”
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