En Marche!

Jeffrey Lewis 0:03

Ah, go for the nuclear weapons. Stay for the steak frite. You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog, and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:26

And I'm Aaron Stein, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Repeat Career Center for the Middle East. How are you doing, Aaron? Not too bad. You know, we're having a little bit of June gloom coming early on the East Coast. It's cold and rainy.

Jeffrey 0:40

It's warm and sunny here, but I have a cold, so I'm going to sound a little stuffed up.

Aaron 0:45

Yeah, I was about to say, sunny and nice weather in California just go together. Remind everybody why we all don't live out there.

Jeffrey 0:54

Well, I have a cold, so there you go. There you go. It can always be sunny. Even in paradise, you get colds. That's right. That's right. So I thought we would talk about France. Yeah. France just had an election, and France is a chronically understudied nuclear power. And so I just thought that would be a fun conversation for us to have.

Aaron 1:15

And I think you're a self-described Francophile. You enjoy your time over there and like all things French.

Jeffrey 1:23

It is my great regret in life that I am a language rock and cannot speak French.

Aaron 1:29

Can you order a glass of red wine? Yes, I can. That's halfway there when you're running around France.

Jeffrey 1:37

You know, people say the Parisians are rude. I have never had any problems, and it's because I insist on speaking French, even though I don't speak a word of French. And I find that after about 30 seconds, this panicked look comes over the person's face, and... It's like all of Paris is in fact a Disney resort with actors playing French people because 30 seconds of my non-existent French and suddenly the person in like a perfect accent is like, okay, what can I do for you?

Aaron 2:13

I'm lucky. My wife is trilingual and one of those languages is French and she's able to get us around, but I'm the dumb guy in the back. Who would have thought I'm a dumb American? Yeah.

Jeffrey 2:21

That's also true. My wife is fluent in French. I mean, so fluent that she passes. And that makes life much easier.

Aaron 2:29

Yeah, yeah.

Jeffrey 2:32

So, good news, bad news. I'm stealing this joke off of Twitter, I have to say. 40% of the French are Nazis, and that's good news.

Aaron 2:43

I think it was a little less. I think they dropped down to about 36%, I think, in the final total. It wasn't quite 40. Don't round up.

Jeffrey 2:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and there were some blank ballots and turnout was low. So, you know, it's probably like 20% of the French are Nazis, but the majority are not. And we have a French president who is not Marine Le Pen, but is in fact Monsieur Macron.

Aaron 3:10

Yeah, that's an entirely good thing. He's a young guy. He espouses, I would say, a point of view. Let's say similar to yours and mine, I would say, and less so than, well, I guess some other people in our country.

Jeffrey 3:26

Yeah, it's I was talking to Bruno Tertre, who is the sort of dean of the French nuclear community and a friend of mine, someone I really enjoy spending time with. And I was kind of curious because I wasn't sure who Bruno would support.

Aaron 3:46

I thought like maybe Fionn, like I think Bruno's friends were probably Fionn supporters, but Bruno himself is not that right wing person.

Jeffrey 3:56

But, you know, the socialist candidate was a lunatic and it was hard to see Bruno supporting him. And so I was like, oh, Bruno, you know, who are you supporting? And he's like, there's this new guy, Macron. And, you know, sure enough, Bruno was very prescient in supporting the candidate who won. So I thought we would talk a little bit about...

I mean, I think it's too early to know what Macron's approach to nuclear weapons will be, although given the tenor of his campaign, I expect no change. I don't know. What do you think, Aaron?

Aaron 4:26

I think that's right. It is an understudied case, but one thing that's sort of in the French Nuclear Weapons 101 for Monterey – sorry, Middlebury Institute and Monterey students is always about sort of the prestige factor associated with the French state and the idea of nuclear weapons and how there's consistency in how the establishment thinks about the importance of nuclear weapons.

Jeffrey 4:49

Yeah, I think one of the reasons I love going to Bruno's meetings is even though my views on nuclear weapons are much more revisionist than I think the French consensus is, it is really enjoyable because even though they love nuclear weapons, They are still French, and they still care about ideas and philosophy. And I find that, in a strange way, my very revisionist ideas about nuclear weapons get a much more involved hearing in Paris than they do here.

I'm not sure I actually persuade people But we can actually have an argument that, you know, is based on first principles. And at least the French people I know, very comfortable having that kind of philosophical argument that's not sort of outcome oriented. Like, no, no, we'll go back to the first principles and then we'll work back. And also people's educations are spectacular.

And so... I have this recurring thing where I always say to people when I'm talking about sanctions, have you read Albert Camus' The Plague? And the answer is always no, except for the answer in Paris to that question is always yes.

Aaron 5:58

I mean, I think what you're saying is that within the context of these meetings is the debate is not really about, I think, maybe the utility or value of nuclear weapons, but about how they're employed, how they could be employed first and foremost, and then secondly, how there are mechanisms for deterrence and stuff like that. So within that, that is where the debate takes place.

I mean, is that an accurate summary of what you just said?

Jeffrey 6:20

Well – You know, I was trying to make actually just a simpler point. I mean, I think you discuss all of those things. But in the United States, if you have a discussion about deterrence being a non-falsifiable concept, you're just signing up to be the hippie.

Aaron 6:39

Right. Yeah. Or ridicule.

Jeffrey 6:40

I mean, right. And if you have that discussion in France, you're actually what you're having is a very interesting philosophical debate about how confident can we be in our models of deterrence. It doesn't mean at the end of that that you're going to, you know, like I'm not going to persuade Bruno that France does not need nuclear weapons like that's not going to happen.

But I can, I think, have a much more introspective discussion in that community, one that I find sharpens the way that I think about things. And, you know, leads to, I think, I have a certain respect for how the French think about deterrence. I actually think it's probably, on the whole, superior to the American conception. And so in a weird way, even though I still disagree with a lot of the policy choices they make, I Feel like they are more internally coherent than our own?

Aaron 7:32

Well, explain. I mean, what is the conception of deterrence? There's, based on your meetings.

Jeffrey 7:37

Well, look, if I was going to step back, right, and just look at the United States and France and the communities of people who discuss deterrence from a distance, I would observe that in the United States, we have very involved discussions about the requirements for deterrence. And our general approach to the requirements for deterrence is very detail-oriented.

So for example, this op-ed that recently came out arguing that the United States needed to un-retire the nuclear-armed Tomahawk for our attack submarines. Yeah, saw that one. Has a series of arguments about escalation control in it. Actually, don't think they're all that sophisticated, but There's still nonetheless this kind of idea that, you know, for each scenario, you need a nuclear weapon of, you know, sort of, you know, the Goldilocks bomb.

You know, it's not too big. It's not too small. And then for this other situation, you need a different size weapon. It's a little bit bigger, but not still not too big. Right. And so there's this whole discussion about details. And my very revisionist interpretation is. Of the American debate is that we're often trying to talk ourselves into the credibility of nuclear threats that aren't credible. Like, we have a political problem which is we're never going to use these things. It's never going to be in our interest to use these things. And every time we try to come up with a scenario in which we might use them, we look at our existing forces and we're like, oh god, I'd never use them. But instead of sort of admitting that, what we do is we, we get in this like Involved debate. Remember, George Bush said, I'm not going to negotiate with myself. Like, we negotiate with ourselves. And so we try to talk ourselves into this idea that if we have just the right number, it's just the right yield, or if it's just, you know, accurate in the right way, that we'll somehow talk ourselves into the credibility of this stuff that we know is not credible.

I find the French are much more honest about that. I mean, their arsenal is almost certainly small because of the limited resources that they had and the other choices that they had to make. But on the other hand, they've had quite an array of systems and they've chosen to keep some and retire others. And I find that the French just...

Are not as focused on those details. And the reason they're not as focused on those details is because they're sort of at peace with these issues of credibility. Like... You just don't have this kind of debate about trying to talk yourselves into things. And I sometimes wonder if it's because they look back at the, you know, dramatic collapse of the French army at the beginning of the Second World War, and they just sort of look at that and go like, well, you know, why do we have nuclear weapons?

Well, because of that. Right? And it's like, well, what scenario in which, you know, can you imagine a scenario in which you would use nuclear weapons again? And I think their attitude is sort of, well, we would know it when we see it, right? And so they don't really engage in a lot of these arguments that we do in the United States that I find very tedious.

Aaron 10:47

You know what else, if I can add to that, you know, as we were preparing for this pod, you know, I dusted off some of the old, some stuff about the history of the development of the French hydrogen bomb, the H-bomb, thermonuclear weapons. One thing I found fascinating was that Their program begins in 1945, and then I think they tested the first weapon in 1960.

It is 1960, correct?

Jeffrey 11:10

That sounds right to me, but I hate being put on the spot about dates. Me too.

Aaron 11:13

I'm just checking my notes here. But the development of their program and then more advanced systems across the different delivery vehicles were taking place at a time when these conceptions of deterrence within the United States were really being fleshed out. Does that make sense? So that's what I was thinking about at the time is that as you begin to see changes in the way the US thinks about nuclear weapons, I'm thinking McNamara's age, sort of the introduction of counterforce and all these targeting.

And so you have this different idea of what nuclear weapons are. And they, from the very outset, realized that they had limited means and focused on a smaller force. And I just think that those two things come together and perhaps shape the debate that you just were talking about.

Jeffrey 11:59

Yeah, I do think that to pick up this earlier question that you raised about authority, I was actually looking to see if I could find Bruno's article on. On this nuclear weapon that was in Algeria during the, I guess it's the revolt of the generals. Like, do people know French history? I mean, do people know that Algeria was a French colony? And that as Algeria moved to independence, because, you know, like, the Algerians wanted the French to leave, there was an enormous population of of French settlers there, so that the right wing in France was very focused on maintaining Algeria as a colonial outpost, and that this led to an attempted military coup.

Aaron 12:50

It influenced early decisions about developments of nuclear weapons because of resource constraints put upon the French military, which was in charge of the weapons program, to put down what was the insurgency in Algeria, ultimately fails. But you don't need to push for basically first generation or their version of first generation, which would come later in the U.S. arsenal.

Jeffrey 13:15

Was good enough yeah so I mean the reason I bring it up and I love this because if you've ever seen Frederick Forsyth's or read Frederick Forsyth's Day of the Jackal or watched the movie based on it which I love right this is that sort of same period in France ultimately Bruno concludes That the French detonate this weapon not to keep it out of the hands of the coup plotters, which is like a very American way to imagine this problem, right?

It's very detailed and, you know, substance-oriented, like, oh, there's a bomb there, there's this coup, the coup plotters may get the bomb, then the coup plotters may use the bomb, and that whole kind of thinking, which is a very American way of thinking, the French don't do, right? De Gaulle orders... The device detonated, and I love Bruno's phrase, to make a symbolic show of authority in the eyes of the French population, the armed forces, and the world, which I would love to hear him say that one in French, right?

It's this idea that nuclear weapons for the French, I don't think it is quite prestige. It is that nuclear weapons represent the authority of the state. The resilience of the state, the resolve of the state. And so in this interesting way, because they don't play that role for us, I don't think, we're constantly talking ourselves into these things.

And I think for the French, the will to possess and the will to use in dire circumstances are simply evident. And so they just – they think about them differently and they think about them in a way that I find very compelling.

Aaron 15:06

When I reread the history of their program, you know, again to prepare for this, it's just fascinating the way norms – and what always struck me is that systems built around nuclear weapons drive a lot of how we think about nuclear weapons, exactly how I was thinking about it. Do we have a force structure that looks like it does?

I mean, we have a force structure that looks like it does because of sort of decades and decades of planning and war scenarios and war gaming against the Soviet Union. And then we've largely inherited this arsenal. And then you get retroactive arguments to justify keeping it around. Yeah, I think that's true. Self-imposed constraints about how to potentially use them in a war against the Soviet Union.

Jeffrey 16:14

Yeah, I think that's that's exactly right. I mean, and I was only nitpicking the prestige language just because, you know, I think it actually cuts somewhat deeper. You know, I do this with the Chinese, too. So this is probably like me being a nitpicking jerk. But prestige to me always feels like it's externally oriented. Prestigious about how other people perceive you.

And I think, both in the Chinese case and the French case, it is not externally oriented, it is internally oriented. It is the idea that you have, in both cases, a general sense that the morale of the country Has failed in the past and it has exposed the country to danger. And so the possession of nuclear weapons is actually about a kind of personal commitment to not allow that to happen again.

Right. It's something they do for themselves. And so I don't know, maybe, maybe I'm, maybe I'm wrong about this, but actually I think I'm right because I find that my arguments about how the Chinese think about nuclear weapons tend to do a lot better in France. In fact, I got a nice invitation to Betois, which is one of the French nuclear weapons design laboratories, to give a talk about China's nuclear arsenal, where I was sort of making that very point.

And I don't know, just from the questions the French ask, I get the sense they kind of think the same way. You know, it's not really about how other people perceive them. Possession of nuclear weapons is really about how they perceive themselves.

Aaron 17:59

Interesting parenthetical footnote before we move on to – the two programs are actually linked. If I'm remembering my history correctly, is that the impetus, the Chinese test – And the likelihood that they can test a thermonuclear weapon before the French pushes downward pressure from de Gaulle on the nuclear weapons establishment to get in gear and hasten the development of thermonuclear weapons.

Jeffrey 18:28

Yeah, there are a ton of really interesting links. I mean, I... I don't want to go down the crazy nuclear express conspiracy theory where you're looking in the one of the authors of this crazy book said he looked in the visitor or no, he got nice French food at a Chinese facility. And so from that, he concluded there were like deep.

Links between you know, France and China. But actually, there are both there was both, I think, a sense of competitiveness. you're right. The the Chinese certainly raced and eventually did beat the French to develop a or test a thermonuclear weapon. And that was something that was important to them. but you also see a surprising amount of back and forth.

Between those weapons laboratories, because the French did not have the same anxieties about the Chinese that we did. And they also had their own, you know, I wouldn't call it isolation from the United States, because now that the historical evidence has emerged, the level of cooperation between the United States and France is much more complex and involved than people realized is just that it was kept secret, I think, because we were concerned about proliferation.

And again, they were concerned about their own internal politics. But yeah, there are these really interesting connections between the Chinese and the French. By the way, I told you about my lunch at Bétois. My other great lunch in France was with Thérèse Delpêche, the late Thérèse Delpêche, which I think I have told this story before, but I was terrified because we'd been in some meetings together and had some really knock-down, drag-out arguments.

She was very smart, and I really enjoyed arguing with her, but like... She was steely. And, you know, I am not the nicest person on earth. So there were some times where we really went at each other. But it turns out it was this lunch at another French nuclear facility. I think it was the enrichment. It was either the, I can't remember if we had lunch at the enrichment facility or the, the first reactor cause we visited both places, but it was in the South of France.

It was wonderful meal. And, and to race basically, I think one of maybe her first husband was a wine importer.

Aaron 20:41

Stop it. Now you're just, now you're rubbing it in.

Jeffrey 20:44

Oh, it was incredible. And it turns out we have the same favorite region. For wine. Which is? Well, she well, I like Saint-Emilion in Bordeaux. And she actually, I think she had a slightly fancier and more obscure taste that was, you know, like 200 yards away or something. But you know, apart from that amazing lunch, I think she actually really captures this difference that we're talking about in terms of Doing this for yourself and your kind of internal orientation and the way that that reflects itself in political debates.

Because she used to say this nasty thing about missile defense. Which I thought was so revealing because Americans would be talking about missile defense and how, you know, you don't want to self deter. You're not going to be willing to use force unless you have your own missile defenses. And, you know, they're actually important for the credibility of our nuclear threats.

And she said this thing. She said, when I was a child, the cowboy shot the Indian, not the arrow. That's good. Yeah. It was this sort of steely resolve of like, no, if you shoot an arrow at me, I'm going to kill you. Why are we even discussing this?

Aaron 22:07

Yeah, well, missile defense was last week. There's lots of ways to beat it.

Jeffrey 22:11

I don't know about you. I find that it is really fun to do open source work on the French nuclear program because they had a fairly big program in the Cold War. And so there are lots of things that you can go look at. And France is a relatively open society. And so it's pretty easy to do open source research.

So like I went through and picked out all the silos for their IRBM program.

Aaron 22:36

I've never done that. And we were talking before this started about whether you actually published it. And I'm not sure we came to the conclusion. I don't think I've seen that work. So where are they?

Jeffrey 22:46

So they are in the south of France near... They're not in Provence, right? They're too far away. So they're north of Provence. And I believe, if I remember this correctly, the way they were originally located was a cool bit of open source work by the NRDC guys who bought a road map, a travel map of France. And it didn't say...

That the IRBMs were there, but it blocked it off as this giant military facility. Interesting. Yeah. And so... There are a series of them arrayed just a little bit north of Provence. I think it's the Plateau d'Albion.

Aaron 23:34

See, I can't speak French. It's terrible.

Jeffrey 23:36

There are a whole bunch of IRBMs spread out along a road, although there aren't any missiles anymore, and they're being converted. So one has been converted to an observatory, and the one I'm really interested in now has a restaurant on the concrete pad.

Aaron 23:54

Oh. It's the Bistro de la Garde.

Jeffrey 23:58

And it has, if I am not incorrect, I believe it has a Michelin star. Really? I believe so. Well, so, you know, I was at this lunch with Therese, you know, and it was a fabulous lunch in the south of France. And the wine was really, really good. And I was like, oh, this is really nice. And she was explaining that the nuclear weapons complex had all of this land that they were able to acquire in the south of France, right?

Because most of their facilities are far outside of Paris, right? And apparently, because they needed big easements for a lot of this stuff, They would lease the land to vineyards. And so they got, she said, I mean, I don't, I'm not sure I believe the story, but after like three glasses of wine, I would have believed anything that they get a really good price on this fantastic wine.

So like, yeah, if you have wine at a French nuclear establishment, it'll be really nice.

Aaron 25:14

Have you eaten at this restaurant?

Jeffrey 25:16

No, not at Bistro de la Garde. I want to go. I keep trying to convince Bruno Tertre, like, we need to go have lunch at the Michelin-starred restaurant sitting on the site of the IRBM silo.

Aaron 25:27

Could we record a live podcast from there?

Jeffrey 25:30

Perhaps.

Aaron 25:30

You know, it has a Michelin star, but it's not that expensive.

Jeffrey 25:34

Like, lunch is 30 to 85 euros. That's not bad.

Aaron 25:39

Ad for a Michelin star? No, I think we can do that. I think we can work that into the budget. Can we use our Patreon support? I was about to say we'll have to rattle the tin cup of Patreon supporters and Jeffrey and Aaron to a Michelin starred restaurant. That's right. Oh, I see how it is. Yeah, that's right. Sorry, Scott. We'll Skype you in. Yeah, that's right. You can Skype in, Scott.

Jeffrey 26:05

Anyway, so I just, you know, yes, I love France. I love France because of the wine. I love France because of the food. I love France because of the way that shopkeepers think that their work is art rather than that they're like in some service industry. I just love everything about it. And not surprisingly, I love the way they approach nuclear weapons.

I mean, my fundamental critique of the kind of American approach to nuclear weapons is Is that we are obsessed with details, and it's because we're trying to talk ourselves into something that's not very credible. And, you know, much like the Chinese, I think the French have a different rationale for possessing nuclear weapons and a different outlook. And even if I don't always agree with their policies, it strikes me that it's much more firmly grounded In a reasonable conception than is our own. And so, you know, if somebody gives me a nice bottle of wine, I'm happy to go to Paris and expound upon their greatness. I think you expounding on anybody's greatness is a happy note. French wine is also a happy. French wine in the future podcast in Provence. God, I haven't even started talking about the hotel that Bruno put me up in the last time I was there.

Aaron 27:19

It's turning into a travel show, not a nuclear weapons podcast.

Jeffrey 27:24

Go for the nuclear weapons. Stay for the steak frites. So that means we're done, right?

Aaron 27:32

I think so, yeah.

Jeffrey 27:34

Aaron, thank you so much for listening to me expound upon my love of all things French.

Aaron 27:44

Of course, my pleasure.

Jeffrey 27:46

Scott, thank you. For sitting there and realizing that you're not going to be invited to that lunch.

Aaron 27:53

I'm so hungry. I'm literally just, I geolocated the restaurant while y'all were talking about it, and it looks pretty good.

Jeffrey 28:00

It does, doesn't it?

Aaron 28:02

Hey, Scott, tell us how things are going on the Slack channel. The Slack channel is going really well. We've got over 100 very active members with a lot of high-level discussion on imagery, North Korean missiles, Iranian missiles. We have a robust community. Chemical weapons and cyber warfare discussions. Basically, it's a nice community. If you're interested in meeting other interested specialists or hobbyists for basically unconventional weapons technologies, it's a pretty cool place to be right now.

For three bucks a month, right? That's right. Three dollars a month and you get access. It's like the internet with no trolls.

Jeffrey 28:45

So if you appreciate the podcast, please consider either supporting us through our Patreon page or leaving us a review on iTunes. Those are things that help sustain our ability to keep delivering you podcasts of increasing sound quality. And in any event, thank you for listening.