French president Emmanuel Macron has faced criticism from within the Nato alliance for stating that France would not respond with nuclear weapons if Russia used its own atomic arsenal against Ukraine or “the region”, which broke with the standard policy of “strategic ambiguity”.
In a France 2 interview on Wednesday evening, Macron said the country’s nuclear doctrine rested on the “fundamental interests of the nation”, which “would not be directly affected if, for example, there was a ballistic nuclear attack on Ukraine, or in the region”.
It is rare for leaders of nuclear-armed countries to spell out explicitly when such weapons would be used because of the decades-old theory of deterrence through strategic ambiguity, and so as not to provide adversaries with a potential playbook for possible attacks.