Tusk Muses About France’s Force De Frappe

Jeffrey Lewis 0:13

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, a podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog.

Aaron Stein 0:32

And I am Dr. Aaron Stein, president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and we are no longer the disarmament podcast, Jeffrey. We are the arms racing and deterrence podcast.

Jeffrey 0:41

It's fair. You know, It's been so long since we've recorded one of these things, an absence that we will not repeat that I forgot the intro.

Aaron 0:53

How are you doing? I'm doing great, man. I think we should tell listeners we're just going through a producer change. Scott will probably still pop on this podcast from time to time, but he's a busy man. And so in order to crank up our episodes, we're bringing somebody new on board just to help us hit the podcast.

Jeffrey 1:11

Yeah. Yeah. What's the segue, Aaron? Are you saying that he's too busy eating pierogies?

Aaron 1:20

I think, no, pierogies. I have a Polish passport. You do? I do. So I have European Union citizenship. And so, you know, I guess I take keen insights or I guess keen interest in the declaratory statements of my second country country.

Jeffrey 1:41

See, as a Ukrainian American from the western part of the country, I come from a long line of people who've been fighting the Catholic polls for centuries.

Aaron 1:55

Yeah, and my father would say that I'm not really Polish because I'm not Catholic. I think we'll leave it there. But Tusk sort of made some news.

Jeffrey 2:05

Yes, Tusk, not the very indulgent Fleetwood Mac follow-up to rumors, but Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland.

Aaron 2:18

I was going to make a tough joke myself. That means we've known each other too long. Yeah, why don't you say what he said? Because that sort of caused a meltdown on social media, and I think he was misquoted.

Jeffrey 2:30

Well, I think the reaction anytime somebody mentions the word nuclear is the people freak out. But Tusk gave a 47-minute speech to the Ukrainian parliament. That 47-minute speech was about the state of the international security environment, Europe's approach to a revanchist Russia. And the need for Poland to spend more on defense and, in particular, adopt a series of policy measures.

It was a really long speech, Aaron. There is a huge digression on European defense finance mechanisms. And twice... At the tail end of the speech, you can watch it online. We can put a link online. Twice he makes references to nuclear weapons. At the 45-20 mark, he said the following thing, which is, he said it in Polish, but thanks to auto-translation, the translation is...

We also need to look more boldly into the future in terms of weapons technology. We are talking seriously with the French about their idea of a nuclear umbrella over Europe. It is high time for Poland to use the means it has, as well as its own experience, but also experience on the battlefield. So that's that is a statement about taking seriously and beginning discussions with France about a proposal Emmanuel Macron has had for France to provide some degree of nuclear deterrence for Europe.

And then at the very end of the speech, at the 4640 mark. Tusk made... He did say it, but this is what caused everyone to kind of freak out, although I will say it was kind of... It was a throwaway line in conclusion. We must be aware that Poland must reach for the most modern possibilities also related to nuclear weapons and modern unconventional weapons.

That is why we are facing a very serious race, and it is a race for security. So... That got reported that Poland is seeking nuclear arms. But if that had actually been the purpose of the speech, I think it would have been 47 minutes justifying a decision to withdraw from the NPT and build nuclear weapons. He didn't say any of that.

He did actually talk about withdrawing from the landmines convention.

Aaron 5:10

They did that.

Jeffrey 5:11

I think right before we're recording this podcast, I think it just came out. But the comments about nuclear weapons were in passing and they were general. And I think they were of the spirit that Poland was in a serious security environment and it was looking anew at its options. It really wasn't a commitment to acquire nuclear weapons.

Aaron 5:36

No, I mean, I'll admit when I first saw it, I thought perhaps he was hedging. But when I actually went back and read the speech, it's quite clear he's not hedging. What he's doing is grappling with the Macron speech, which I think so much of Europe is as well, which is- What would a more pronounced French role on the continent be for providing extended deterrence guarantees?

And so when I reread the speech in that context, what he's saying is reaching for new concepts of deterrence, not necessarily the American backstop, to use the British phrase of the day, and to outfit itself with new modern weapons, which I took to be as conventional, not nuclear.

Jeffrey 6:19

Here, I want to say I don't I don't think Tusk is ruling things out. I mean, if if France or the United States offered to forward deploy nuclear weapons in Poland, I think Poland would be very open to that conversation. So I'm not I'm not saying that Tusk ruled things out. But at the same time. This is the beginning of a discussion.

It's not kind of the pat choice that is depicted in the headlines. And I mean, it's a very interesting discussion because historically, France hasn't really done extended deterrents.

Aaron 6:56

No, I mean, we were talking about this off podcast. I think we've talked about this before on the show somewhere in the archives. The French are very, very French in terms of how they think about deterrence. I think you like it the most in terms of their declaratory policy, and it's elegant. And so this would be a shift for them.

And I think that's more important thinking about than just sort of numbers in terms of how many they have versus how many the Russians have.

Jeffrey 7:26

Yeah, the way that I have always thought about the French approach to deterrence, which I understand is changing, is that in the United States, it was very hard for us, I think, to imagine the circumstance in which we would use nuclear weapons. So we have a kind of Endless discussion about scenarios and the credibility of our actions in certain scenarios and whether the forces that we have are credible and match to the scenario.

And for the French, it was always, I think, very straightforward. It was like, hey, have you seen that picture of the guy crying as German tanks rolled down the Champs-Élysées? That's not going to happen again.

Aaron 8:07

Right.

Jeffrey 8:09

If that happens again, there are going to be people crying in other places because we're going to murder them.

Aaron 8:15

Yeah, we're going to vaporize those mother effers.

Jeffrey 8:18

And so, you know, as a consequence of that, there is this very strong tradition in France, which I accept is changing, that because there is this specific scenario, the fall of France, the Doctrine and approach was kind of very straightforward. It was making sure that one could credibly retaliate so that the fall of France was accompanied by the fall of of whatever aggressor, catastrophic damage to the aggressor. Right, right. I fall is probably strong, but doing more damage to the aggressor than say the size of France.

Aaron 9:05

Right. No, totally. And that remains in place to this day. I think the changes in doctrine are the encapsulation of French interests, which is to include a European component to it and how to communicate with elements of the European Union or European Union members about discussions about deterrence with France at the centerpiece.

Jeffrey 9:25

Yeah, I think – and I think this is kind of where you get this very traditional French approach. Because they had this very narrow conception, it made sense for deterrence to be a strictly national endeavor. It made sense that this is why France didn't believe in American extended deterrence, right? It's de Gaulle who famously says, why would the United States trade Hamburg for New York?

From a French traditional perspective – Nuclear deterrence was a fundamentally national capability. And so the consequence of that is, and you know, there's some Gallic pride too, but France stayed out of NATO's integrated command and France has never participated in the nuclear planning group or other NATO structures involving nuclear weapons. Macron has a different view, right? And so in 2020, we started to see this shift.

Aaron 10:21

Yeah, I mean, I think we should say it's the complete indigenization of their nuclear deterrent, from the design of the weapons to the components that go in the weapon to the things that the weapons are carried on. And that's the difference with the British, right? Because the British lease, or I guess buy Trident from the United States, and obviously the close interlinkages between our nuclear enterprise and theirs.

Jeffrey 10:46

And I will say that All of these things have exceptions. And so on the one hand, there's kind of the way the French present it. I think we now know historically that the United States may be provided a little more design assistance than either the French or the United States cared to admit in the time. And also we have seen, was it the Treaty of Lancaster, where the UK and France agreed to share some costs associated with certain facilities for the maintenance of nuclear weapons?

But I do think at a deep and profound level, the French conception was that this is a national capability that really is only credible in national contingencies. Until recently. And I will I will also say. I I'm going to say that most of the change comes with Macron's 2020 speech, but I think you can go find hints of what he said in things that Nicolas Sarkozy or even Jacques Chirac said.

But those are just hints.

Aaron 12:01

Yeah. I'd even say it goes back a little bit farther to Francois Mitterrand in the 1980s. But, you know, I'm not a scholar on French nuclear. Bruno, if you listen to this, will email you or me and tell me where we're wrong.

Jeffrey 12:13

I'll make him correct me over a fabulous meal in Paris. That is that is my goal is to be wrong so that Bruno feels the need.

Aaron 12:21

Or if we're still welcome. It still is very French. As I understand Macron's, and by the way, I don't think other European countries are actually understanding what he's offering. And maybe we'll come back to that in a second.

Jeffrey 12:36

Well, does he understand what he's offering? A deep and profound question, but please continue.

Aaron 12:42

What he appears to be offering is basically, it would be sort of, Each European country, as part of collective defense to create a more autonomous Europe, would bring certain capabilities to the table. And they would integrate them in certain ways. That's sort of the idea of a European army. And one of the French contributions to this would be the independent deterrent applied to European security, sort of as an extension of French security.

Jeffrey 13:11

And so it's not giving nuclear weapons to Europe.

Aaron 13:14

It's not necessarily for deploying nuclear weapons in Europe. It is sort of making more declaratory policy that European interests now come under the French conception of deterrence.

Jeffrey 13:26

Yeah, this is how this started. What Macron said in 2020, which caused a big kerfuffle in France, was that when he talked about Nuclear deterrence. He used the traditional French conception that nuclear weapons would be used to defend France's vital interests. But he mentioned the European dimension of France's vital interests, which I think is a fair intellectual point, but very not traditionally French, which is to imagine France's vital interests as Collective European security fair which is everyone in France knew what he meant although Macron himself was like wow did I really say that he did that a couple more times Where he would mention the European dimension of France's vital interests.

And what I love is in January, he did it again and got misquoted. He was in Sweden and he gets asked this question and he repeats the statement about France's vital interests as having a European dimension, but it got misreported as him actually offering a nuclear umbrella. Yeah. And which is wild because he gets pounced on from the left and the right.

But sometimes, like, I guess you have to say the quiet part out loud because in contrast to every other time, you know, that he, you know, showed like a little hint of leg. Merz, right, who at the time was not chancellor. I guess he's still not chancellor. Chancellor and waiting. Right. Yeah. Right. But at the time, he was just the leader of the Christian Democrats.

And he then jumped on that and he said that Germany should have discussions with both the British and the French about whether nuclear sharing or at least nuclear security from the UK and France could also apply to us. And then it was almost like a snowball because Tusk made comments then as well, and so did the leaders of the Baltics.

And so at that point, Macron... Because it was now no longer him offering. It was them asking. He was able to follow up. So I think Tusk's comment makes sense in terms of this process of Macron keeps hinting at the European dimension of vital interests. He gets misquoted. That misquote is well received in Germany and Poland. And Latvia and Lithuania and Estonia.

And the consequence of that is Donald Tusk is like saying again, hey, this is a conversation we should have. But I think that's important to say that's where this is at the moment, which is it is a conversation. Right.

Aaron 16:27

And I think... I mean, the backdrop to this, of course, is the fears in Europe, which I think have reached, at least from the online chatter, sort of apoplectic sort of levels about the U.S. withdrawing from its defense of Europe. And I do want to say the Trump administration has not actually said that. You know, Hegseth in his talks in Germany was overtly hinted Basically, overtly said is that we want to see a division of labor where Europe takes on – and they use the word conventional defense of Europe, basically implying that the US nuclear security guarantee would continue.

But I think as we're going to get into, this becomes an extended deterrence problem of which France will also have to deal with if this were – these discussions were to sort of progress beyond sort of the notional or theoretical. Yeah.

Jeffrey 17:19

I mean, the one thing I would really emphasize here, which I kind of find very delicious in its overall quality, is for years I have made the argument that we over rely on specific military capabilities for extended deterrence. And we undervalue the broader health of the relationship. So I would get very cranky when I would be, you know, lectured on like how important it was to have a particular generation of the B61 in a particular bunker in a particular country.

And, you know, I was kind of like, well, the credibility isn't the number of weapons. It isn't the type of weapons. It is the broader relationship. And, So some of the same people who used to lecture me on this were now cheerleading this, I think, enormous collapse in European confidence, which is all vibes, right? It's all vibes, yes.

But it's real in that sense, because that's what extended deterrence is. Extended deterrence is vibes. And I think it makes sense to understand the kind of Interest on the part of the polls is it's like on the one hand, they have a nuclear umbrella from the U.S. And I hate the term nuclear umbrella. But on the other hand, they're like, boy, it's raining pretty hard.

Wouldn't it be great if we had like an umbrella? And, you know, I don't know, maybe like also a rain jacket, like maybe we could hang out inside a car. We could park that car in a garage and like just really stay the hell away from the water.

Aaron 18:57

No, definitely, you know, completely. And I mean, this, I mean, I started doing it myself, just sketching out sort of overall force total numbers, right?

Jeffrey 19:07

Oh, I had such a good time.

Aaron 19:10

I mean, I was looking at Iskander brigades that the Russians could, I didn't even include Russian strategic weapons. Do you know what I mean? But I think this gets back to the question about the credibility of your deterrence. And again, where I do think the French proposal will ultimately struggle is countries have to trust that you'll use the bomb for them.

And a lot of times they want the stuff inside their country. I mean, this is how we end up with nuclear weapons in Europe. Let me put that a different way. This is why we continue to have nuclear weapons in Europe, not why initially we did. And so people want it as sort of a physical thing that ties you to them.

And the French don't have enough.

Jeffrey 19:51

Yeah. The thing I used to say that really pissed people off, but it's right, there are many problems with the term nuclear umbrella. I mean, one is... It's not really an umbrella. Like, an umbrella keeps the rain off you. It doesn't nuke the shit out of the clouds if they rain on you. Right. These are different things.

What extended nuclear deterrence is is a threat to retaliate on behalf of your corpse. And that is a special and strange thing. But at a deeper level, the other reason I don't love the term nuclear umbrella is there is no such thing. Like, we have general... Security commitments to our allies, right? We're supposed to respond to an armed attack.

NATO doesn't, we're not required to respond in any particular way. We are just simply required to respond. Now, we also have nuclear weapons. And so, so much of the task of extended deterrence is Without pre committing in advance to use nuclear weapons on the behalf of allies, because you just can't do that. Like, that's not a thing we would ever do.

No one does that. You have to sort of make real the implicit threat to respond to a nuclear attack. And potentially respond to a nuclear attack or a devastating conventional attack with nuclear weapons through these kinds of arrangements.

Aaron 21:22

Yeah. I mean, the Russians did this in Belarus a couple months ago, maybe a year or so ago in explicit detail.

Jeffrey 21:28

I mean, I think there are situations where you don't need the weapons forward deployed because you have all the soft stuff working for you. But then there are harder cases. And so to me, this is just a classic example. Problem of extended deterrence, which by the way, when I think of extended deterrence, I think we make a huge mistake in that we always define extended as extra territorial, like outside one's borders.

But in fact, and this is what I love about the French. I think of extended deterrence as moving from the core to the periphery. So like the French nuclear deterrent was credible because it was about the fall of France as embodied by the fall of Paris as embodied by like tanks on the Champs-Élysées.

Aaron 22:20

Yeah, Nazi tanks running through the Champs-Élysées.

Jeffrey 22:23

Right. The minute you get out of whatever your kind of Core urban area if you're a country like France where you really have just Paris as your kind of you know centerpiece maybe it starts to get more complicated you know like the there's a like a real question I think as we have discussed on the podcast for the Russians about whether their nuclear deterrence is credible with regard to Kaliningrad or Crimea or Kamchatka You know, the three K's, the three ha's, however you say it.

Aaron 23:03

The three K sounds in English. Yeah.

Jeffrey 23:05

Yeah. Right. And so there's like France had a very elegant approach because it had a compact core. If It begins to imagine, if French thinkers begin to imagine a European dimension to their vital interests, they are going to discover that a little bit like gravity, nuclear deterrence weakens with the square of the distance, right? The square root of the distance.

I love that. Yeah. Perhaps slightly adjusted for the mass of the forces with which one begins. I don't know.

Aaron 23:49

Well, I mean, and I think that's the other potential challenge they run into is that for obvious reasons and for the reasons that you just discussed, you can keep a smaller force when your deterrence is basically ring fenced around national borders. It's when the borders are extended to your periphery. Where in theory, right, and you're trying to deter a superior armed adversary, in this case the Russians are when it comes to nuclear, there will become very, I think, earnest discussions about how many you need in order to ensure that your deterrence is credible so that you can retain enough to inflict that devastating loss on the Russians in the case of an attack on, say, Latvia.

Jeffrey 24:38

Yeah, I mean, I think there are a bunch of considerations here, and I might disagree slightly with the way that you structured that. But I would say one immediate question that arises is there is a huge credibility problem when it comes to using nuclear weapons when you are as far from your core as Poland is from Paris.

Getting from I'm not going to use any nuclear weapons to I'm going to use any number of nuclear weapons that is one or above, I think is a pretty high bar. And that is, as you said, how we end up justifying for deployed U.S. nuclear weapons. Right. I think the French will find it very hard to extend credible nuclear guarantees on behalf of European allies.

Right. If they don't engage in nuclear sharing. And I'm not sure I'm going to recommend nuclear sharing, but it just seems to me that unless there are French nuclear weapons sitting in Poland in some fashion, and I had a lot of fun dreaming up different ways they could do it, boy, I think it's really hard to make that threat credible.

Aaron 26:05

Well, this is something I keep coming back to in this current moment. Like, yes, the current crisis in transatlantic relations is about vibes, but it's very real. But at some point, reality does catch up. And the monumental nature of the task at hand sort of forces you back to factory settings. Does that make sense? Do you know what I mean?

It is actually more... I think credible, or at least sort of something that I could think about, which is to try and mend fences with the United States. Because I think as two friends of the pod, Prenet and Vipin recently wrote on, I think, Prenet's Substack. There is – and I think we have disagreements with them professionally.

We love them both about how they did the calculations. But the Russians have a lot more nuclear options than the French or the British. And therefore, in certain scenarios, you would want to at least have parity that the United States is able to bring. And I think we have slight quibbles with this argument. But I'm trying to do an elegant segue to that.

Jeffrey 27:15

Yeah, I – I mean, I admire both of these people tremendously and I would like nothing better for both of them to be back in government making decisions again. I don't, I fundamentally don't agree with two things that they argue in the paper, right? One, one thing that they argue. So I tend to think the big problem is going from using zero to one or more nuclear weapons and that this is essentially a, a, Almost a magic trick or kind of a form of sleight of hand where you have to convince the Russians that you genuinely believe that you, if you are France, that the fundamental integrity of French security is so compromised by the fall of Poland that, that a nuclear use is, is credible.

Right. And, you know, it's, it's sort of hard to imagine how you do that. You know, maybe you talk about how in 39 it would have been better to start the nuclear war, you know, I don't know. It's just it's pretty hard for me to imagine. But what what I take Pranay and Vipin to be arguing, which, again, I just don't find compelling, is that this is actually a problem of having limited options.

And a problem of having a capability equivalent to the Russians. And I think those things are wrong, right? So the limited nuclear options argument I understand is... If Russia were to engage in a limited nuclear conflict, because France has fundamentally a core deterrent based on submarines, and they talk about the UK and France together, that really they only have this kind of catastrophic response option.

But they acknowledge that that's not true, that France does have aircraft-delivered Systems, you know, and and they say like, well, you know, it would be complicated because the aircraft have other missions and there aren't that many of them. And like, I think all that is sort of true, but kind of beside the point, because like, I don't like, France could make more like, it's not, it's not, you know, it's not like if you imagine France transitioning to a an extended deterrent relationship.

The fact that they don't have precisely the posture that would be ideal for it, I think it's not the same thing as saying that they couldn't relatively quickly have that posture. I mean, they do have aircraft that they could, for example, forward base in Poland. They simply could.

Aaron 30:10

Yeah. I also think that their argument is also based around war termination.

Jeffrey 30:14

Well, that's the second overmatch, which also I think is wrong for another reason. But wait, do you disagree? Do you think that in the event that Russia – first of all, I mean like does one believe in limited nuclear operations as a viable option?

Aaron 30:29

Yeah. That's what this is really about, right? The idea is that in the event of a crisis, France could, let's say, you know, flood the bombers, right? Flood the boomers, excuse me. So put more weapons out at sea, but to credibly signal by moving around its dual capable aircraft, presumably with the air launch cruise missiles that would come with them, right?

And at that point, you're no longer talking, in my opinion, about limited conflict, right? Because it would be in the Russians' best interests, even in small sort of limited nuclear war scenarios, which I think are favored amongst American war gamers, I'm not sure about French, to strike their home bases, right? And so all of a sudden, you're engaging the French homeland in nuclear exchange, which makes this argument...

Sort of notional rather than I think practical and real.

Jeffrey 31:18

I think that's right. Like one, it's hard to imagine limited nuclear options against France because there's just, isn't that much of France.

Aaron 31:24

And the European continent itself is pretty small. I mean, and so yes, France and Poland are separated geographically, but I, you know, the old joke, Texas is bigger than France. These are small places.

Jeffrey 31:37

So I just, I think that, you know, if, if you want to play the grad school seminar game of France, The Russians use one. Do the French have the option of just using one in response? Yes. I think on paper they have those capabilities. I take Vipin and Prenet's point that they might want to build a few extra aircraft or something or whatever.

But to me, that's not really fundamentally, I think, a legitimate objection to this. The French could do it. And in some ways, I think their position is superior to ours because... The small nature of France and Poland makes some of the bigger retaliatory options inherently more credible. The second argument they make is this overmatch idea. And honestly, I don't buy this.

I don't buy this at all. If the Russians think that grabbing Poland is going to result in a nuclear weapon on Moscow... They're not, they're not like, they're going to be deterred. Like that's, this is, there's no, like you can do more damage. Like, no, that's not how it works.

Aaron 32:51

And this is where I, again, I think reality starts to come back here. Like, yes, there are vibes, but even this administration, I could see, you know, if we're having nuclear exchange in Europe and, That has always been considered the pathway to strategic exchange with the United States. Now, this is where obviously the Europeans are now concerned, is that the Trump administration won't follow through on this.

But I also think reality starts to come into play here, right? So let's say you're a military planner in Moscow. You get from zero to one, right? Why would you stop at one? Would you leave the British deterrent unchallenged in this sort of dynamic as well? So you start running out these scenarios. It's really hard for me to see limited nuclear conflict in Poland or somewhere in the Baltics along the forward line of troops.

Jeffrey 33:40

Well, and I made this argument in another context, and whatever. People don't think it's persuasive as I do, but if you are the Russians and you are planning a limited use of nuclear weapons, you have to put your entire force on alert. Yes. You do not begin a nuclear war leaving your entire force off alert.

Aaron 34:06

They could be with Vadim up in Kaliningrad, right?

Jeffrey 34:08

Because we will hit you on general principle for being stupid. Right. Because the side that is being attacked is going to have strategic warning. And so there's going to be a period of increasing tension because the only reason you're using nuclear weapons is you're frustrated that you haven't gotten something, right? I mean, there's going to be warning.

So both sides are going to be preparing for this possibility. The side that gets attacked with nuclear weapons is not going to understand the scale of the attack. Right. I mean, it's going to be like the Boston Marathon bombing, right? There's going to be tons of reports flooding in. There's going to be tons of panic and worry.

And it's going to be in the context where a nuclear use was credible. And so the victim is not going to immediately know that this is going to stop. And the victim is going to be reacting as though this could be the beginning of what is a much larger act of violence. And if if the victim observes that the aggressor is perhaps not fully ready to execute the larger act of violence, the pressure to escalate will be overwhelming.

Right. So to me, it's just crazy, like. What that means is in practice, the Russians are going to put the whole force on alert. Some number of nuclear weapons is going to go off. And you're going to look at this broad alert and this broad mobilization. And you're going to think like, hey, this is like a bag of potato chips.

We've opened it up. We are eating the whole bag. Time to get down to it. So I just, I don't think overmatch here is a meaningful measure. You know, it really is just... If the Russians conclude that the Poles and the French won't fight, then they would engage in the predation. Which is, by the way, why they invaded Ukraine.

They invaded Ukraine because they concluded the Ukrainians would not fight. They were wrong about it, but that's what they concluded. That's why I don't think nuclear weapons would have made one bit of difference to the Russian calculation. Because... They didn't think they were – they thought they were anticipating being greeted as liberators. Yeah, exactly. That's when deterrence fails, right?

It's when you think that the other side will collapse. If you think the other side will resist and that it will be difficult and hard, then you don't freaking do it.

Aaron 36:56

Yeah, and in that sense, even with – All of the stuff that's taken place, this vibe shift, let's put it that way. And let's even assume some sort of drawdown of US forces from Europe that demonstrated, I hate to use the word resolve, but sort of what Tusk said in that speech really matters. Do you know what I mean?

It's that he's prepared to fight. And this is where we can sort of sit and make fun of the Germans that it took, you know, how many long decades and the threat of NATO's collapse for them to deficit spend on their own defense. As making fun of them, but also why it fundamentally matters. This is the start of a process where Germany, and this is hilarious, if you go back to Charles de Gaulle, imagine telling Charles de Gaulle, oh, by the way, your future successor is talking about extending and quasi-non-nationalizing the deterrence in protection of Germany.

I think he would have stayed in Algeria.

Jeffrey 37:53

Maybe. I mean, it is a weird time we live in. It is.

Aaron 38:01

It does make the Arms Racing podcast, formerly known as the Arms Control Walk podcast, more fun.

Jeffrey 38:06

You know, Aaron, my closing thought on this, though, is this is why I think U.S. INF deployments in the 1980s were so important, is the... Soviet general staff seemed to believe that NATO could not respond. Right. And that NATO's response would actually tear NATO apart. Which is, I think, pretty much what Putin imagined would happen with his invasion of Ukraine is that Germany would stay neutral and that NATO would tear itself to bits.

And, you know, like that might happen. But. If the consequence of this is the opposite, which is that it becomes clear that NATO has a willingness as an alliance to resist and to make defense investments, then I... I don't think that what the Russians do is sit down and do an exchange calculation. I think it's much more a simplistic will they or won't they.

And so, you know, I tend to have these very simple ideas about deterrence, right? That deterrence is fundamentally about punishment. It's easier to do for the core than it is the periphery. And your adversary either thinks you are the kind of person who do it or they think you aren't. Right. And, and you can be like, well, what if I gave you six more weapons and we, you know, and like none of that matters, you know, like, yeah, it, it, DeGaulle would full stop.

You look at DeGaulle, you're like, Hey, that guy, he'd push the button. He definitely pushed the button. And, Right? Like, what's your grad school seminar approach? Like, well, what if de Gaulle was faced in the tanks? They stopped in the suburbs of Paris. And, you know, and it's like, like, f*** off. De Gaulle is, he's doing it, you know?

Aaron 40:07

Yeah. You know, we're also at the start of this. Again, we're at the start of this. There is just another scenario, because human beings are so complicated, that we sort of get past this tumult, and the Trump administration declares victory, and we end up with a rearmed Europe, a bunch more troops along the Russian border, and no changes to US declaratory policy, and you have more French nuclear weapons, and that's a strategic loss for Putin, if you ask me.

Jeffrey 40:35

Well, I mean, he's already endured... Sweden and Finland, instead of joining the TPNW as advocates had hoped, they were like, nuclear deterrence, TPNW. Those were the days, those were the days. Speech, Macron speech was in Sweden. Oh yeah, I know, I know that was not. Yeah, yeah, the Blue and Gold bomb may may come back, you know.

Aaron 41:02

I mean, I could talk about this all day. This is fun. But I fundamentally agree with you. There are some Russians who are doing damage calculations. And those things may leak out at one point or the other. I think our point would be, and I think Olya Oliker has made this point on Blue Sky as well. It's sort of just kind of up to Putin, his Botox face, and wherever bunker he's in with the Aeroflot stewardesses, what he's thinking about life in terms of how he thinks about damage calculations.

Jeffrey 41:26

I think that's right. Yeah. I think that's 100% right.

Aaron 41:29

All right. Well, with that, Jeffrey, I think we've covered it all. Thank you.

Jeffrey 41:34

We're back, Aaron.

Aaron 41:35

We're back. We've sorted our producer.

Jeffrey 41:37

Like the Cold War, you can't keep us down.

Aaron 41:43

Euro missiles to electric bugaloo. All right. If you'd like to show up, patreon.com slash ACW podcast. We promise we're going to be doing more of these. So continue to support us, patreon.com slash ACW podcast. Join the coolest Slack channel on the planet where I'm certain there'll be some French people in there telling us how we mispronounce Macron's name.

And so with that, Jeffrey, nice chatting with you.

Jeffrey 42:05

Aaron, thanks for talking to me. And listeners, thanks for not giving up on us.