Tactical Nuclear Weapons and NATO.pdf - Program on Strategic ...

clear sentiment for the Alliance <strong>and</strong> an insistence on
achieving <strong>and</strong> maintaining independent national capability.
As a later French nuclear theorist recently encapsulated
it: “Every French village displays a memorial
to the failure of conventional deterrence.” 31 The
insistent logic of this position, articulately formulated
<strong>and</strong> largely unchallenged by the political class, was to
pursue independent strategic <strong>and</strong> intermediate-range
nuclear capability first, but then to begin working on
French TNWs (tactical bombs <strong>and</strong> a mobile surfaceto-surface
missile [SSM], Pluton). A few years after its
first nuclear test in 1960, France was emphasizing an
independent <strong>and</strong> unconstrained “pre-strategic” use
of its national TNWs, using gravity bombs, surfaceto-surface
missiles, <strong>and</strong> later air-to-surface missiles,
to give a last warning before resorting to the use of
France’s national strategic forces.
Germany.
West Germany was the fulcrum <strong>and</strong> decisive prize
of the Cold War confrontation, <strong>and</strong> faced the most
politically complex set of choices. Its geopolitical predicament
as a narrowly truncated country right up
against the East-West fault line of the inner-German
border, left it reliant on the threat of early use of U.S.
intermediate-range <strong>and</strong> strategic-range nuclear forces
to prevent loss of national territory <strong>and</strong> widespread
devastation, preferably by avoiding any war. This idea
clashed with German strategic culture which, mindful
of the wry observation that “the shorter the (nuclear)
range, the deader the Germans,” was skeptical <strong>and</strong>
fearful of nuclear provocation or mistakes, yet which
also rejected non-nuclear alternatives such as fixed
fortifications <strong>and</strong> barrier defenses because they would
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