France deepens nuclear deterrence cooperation with European partners, WSJ reports

France is cooperating with 10 other European countries to strengthen its role as a nuclear power on the continent and bolster deterrence against Russian aggression, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort comes as European confidence in the United States' commitment to the region's security continues to fade.

The initiative, known as forward deterrence, includes building new infrastructure, communications, early-warning and intelligence-sharing links with France's allies. It also envisions deploying French nuclear-capable Rafale fighter jets across Europe.

The United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark have all joined the project to varying degrees since French President Emmanuel Macron announced it in March.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb stressed the limits of his country's role. "We don't have any plans to put nuclear weapons on Finnish soil in peacetime. But we do have plans for creating a strategic dilemma for Russia," he said. "We felt it would be useful for our security to get information, to be involved in it. We don't know where this is going to end, it's probably a 10- to 15-years process."

Rather than convening all participants together, France has held one-on-one talks with each partner. That approach has led European nations to stay in constant contact with one another to compare what Paris has told each of them, senior defense officials told the WSJ.

The push comes amid growing European doubts about American reliability. Questions over whether Washington would risk nuclear war to defend a European ally have intensified as US President Donald Trump pursues energy deals with Russian President Vladimir Putin and increases pressure on Ukraine, the newspaper reported.

French officials argue their deterrent carries more credibility because Europe's security matters directly to Paris. "There is one difference between France and the US: we share the same geography, we are part and parcel of the same continent, we have economic and sociological continuity with our neighbors writ large," Macron's adviser Chatel said at the Warsaw Security Conference.

In his March speech launching the initiative, Macron underscored that France's vital interests are bound up with those of its allies. "Could we consider that the survival of our closest partners may be put at risk without it affecting our vital interests?" he said. Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, meanwhile, said the plan was not meant to "replace anything. It supplements the nuclear guarantees that were already there" from the United States.

Macron has also announced that France will resume producing nuclear devices for the first time in decades and that the size of its stockpile will become confidential. Despite the broader participation, the nuclear force will remain entirely under French control, the WSJ reported. "The French will let us participate in their nuclear deterrence as much as the Americans," said one government minister from another European country.

According to the report, that arrangement was chosen to make the forward deterrence strategy acceptable across France's political spectrum, including to the far-right party of Marine Le Pen, which is polling ahead in the presidential race ahead of next spring's elections.