President Emmanuel Macron of France is quietly but quickly boosting military cooperation with the United States.
In recent days, French and U.S. officials have pursued increased nuclear deterrence cooperation. France has also surged its naval forces into the eastern Mediterranean, with Macron preparing an operation to escort civilian vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. All of this will be welcome news in the White House.
While Macron and President Donald Trump may have lost the ‘bromance’ intimacy of Trump’s first term, they appear to remain on generally good terms. Trump recently praised France for its “great” response to the Iran war. The speed and potency of this French military response contrasted starkly with that of the United Kingdom. The U.K. has a military base in the European Union member state and Mediterranean island of Cyprus, which was attacked shortly after the war began. Yet, while France has now deployed more than 10 to 14 warships to the region, the U.K. has deployed just one warship. And it is yet to arrive.
Macron has further pledged that once major combat operations end, France will lead a European military effort to escort vessels through the now-heavily conflicted Strait of Hormuz. While Macron has criticized the U.S.-Israel war on Iran as outside of international law, he has otherwise supported the U.S. action without direct participation in it (Macron may soon face a test if the U.S. asks France to expedite its escort activities amid the high-intensity combat now occurring in the Strait). Again, this stands in contrast with the dithering of U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Then there are the nuclear developments.
The Paris talks focused on “U.S.-France deterrence, strategic stability, and non-proliferation.” These talks are notable for three reasons. First, being in Paris, they appear to have been held on French initiative and invitation. Second, they did not include NATO’s only other nuclear weapons power and America’s closest ally, the U.K. And third, the readout suggests France will adapt its nuclear posture to improve NATO security amid the U.S.’s growing military focus on the Pacific.
Macron has just announced a new nuclear deterrence posture that will see France increase its nuclear warhead stockpile and undertake nuclear strike exercises with NATO allies. Macron has long been more hawkish on nuclear posture than most French leaders. He ordered a May 2024 public nuclear strike exercise off Corsica, for example. Still, it seems clear that the French president also wants to engage in closer nuclear cooperation with the U.S. military. It’s a decision the proudly nationalist and fiercely independent former French president Charles de Gaulle is surely frowning at from his grave.
The cooperation isn’t for show.
It will very likely see closer intelligence sharing on Russian nuclear ballistic submarine activity and cooperation on ballistic missile submarine patrols. The purpose will be to ensure NATO maximizes both its nuclear deterrent readiness and its ability to monitor Russian submarines in the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans. This represents a marked shift from France’s previous position of viewing its nuclear deterrent forces as wholly separate from NATO’s command structure. And while that will technically remain the case, this cooperation will blur those lines. Alongside Trump’s own bolstering of U.S. nuclear deterrence against Russia, this Franco-American engagement will strengthen the world’s most successful alliance. Starmer should be worried: it seems like a very deliberate snub that the U.K. was not present at these talks.
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France must allocate more funding than Macron has yet pledged toward its defense budget. It will be unable to maintain activities of this kind unless it does so. Still, its deployments in relation to the Iran war and new engagement on nuclear deterrence deserve the Trump administration’s gratitude. As with Germany on defense spending, France is finally responding positively to Trump’s pressure that European powers do more for their own defense.
This oldest U.S. alliance will be better for it. And perhaps Macron’s “strategic autonomy” doctrine will begin to exist on more than paper.