 French President Jacques Chirac has said France would be ready to use nuclear weapons against any state which launched a terrorist attack against it. Speaking at a nuclear submarine base in north-western France, Mr Chirac said a French response "could be conventional. It could also be of another nature." | Isn't the conventional French response to an attack a white flag? |
| That's not a white flag, that's the French battle ensign: a white cross on a white background. E'ryone knows that. |
| We have — or used to; I'm assuming we still do — a similar policy. An attack on us using Nuclear-Chem-Bio weapons can be answered by a counterattack using NBC weapons, which ones at the discretion of the president or senior surviving commander. There's no requirement for it to be the same type of weapon. Large areas of the U.S. being wiped out by anthrax or plague, for instance, could result in Ratholistan's capital getting vaporized, rather than us releasing a counter-plague in Ratholistan. |
He said France's nuclear forces had been configured for such an event. France has had an independent nuclear deterrent since 1960, after an arms programme ordered by Charles de Gaulle.
| I doubt they even have an offensive chem weapons capability anymore, though. |
On a visit to L'Ile-Longue base in Brittany, Mr Chirac said leaders of states who would "use terrorist means against us, just like anyone who would envisage using, in one way or another, arms of mass destruction, must understand that they would expose themselves to a firm and adapted response from us".
| I'm not sure what the response would be to a mass casualty conventional weapons attack. It wouldn't be technically difficult to assemble the makings of the WWII blockbuster, position several of them around a major city, and boom them all at once. The results might approach those of a small nuclear weapon, and would robably cause more casualties than a large scale gas attack. |
| If they don't cross the NBC line, we wouldn't either. A visit by a formation of B52s with conventional bombs would do nicely. Assuming we have a target, that is. |
The president spoke of new threats in a post-Cold War world, without mentioning any specific threat against France. "In numerous countries, radical ideas are spreading, advocating a confrontation of civilisations," he said, adding that "odious attacks" could escalate to "other yet more serious forms involving states". Following the end of the Cold War, France scaled down its nuclear deterrent, scrapping a number of missile systems. It is believed to have a current arsenal of around 350 nuclear weapons. |