"The Ultimate Guarantee": When nuclear weapons were a source of temperance in times of cohabitation

Book. As the turmoil on the French political scene increasingly exposes France to the risks of a new cohabitation, Dominique Mongin, a historian specializing in deterrence, opportunely published in April a reinterpretation of how French military nuclear issues have been managed domestically since 1986. A very cautious but unprecedented opening on this eminently sensitive and topical subject, with a preface by Maurice Vaïsse, a specialist in the history of French defense policy.

Through The Ultimate Guarantee (Odile Jacob, 352 pages, 27 euros), Mr. Mongin defends the thesis that the tensions that may have arisen between François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac (1986-1988), Mr. Mitterrand and Edouard Balladur (1993-1995), or Mr. Chirac and Lionel Jospin (1997-2002) have, in his eyes, in no way called into question the essential: the French attachment to nuclear deterrence. A "bipartisan policy" which, he writes, has always survived the games of apparatus since the launch, in secret, in 1954, of the French nuclear program.

The review of these more than fifteen years of French political life, through the cross-analysis of declaratory postures of each other and the exploitation of archives, reveals all the rough edges that marked these three cohabitations, as well as the great temperance shown at the time by the political leaders.

A useful work, as the budget debate once again promises to be a vector of parliamentary instability in the face of the difficult balance to be found between the savings that the government wishes to make and the new announced increase in military spending.

Since the beginning of the ^Fifth Republic, there has been a real fear of a power struggle between the two poles of the executive over the president's "reserved domain," Mr. Mongin admits. The French Constitution establishes a relatively ambiguous division of power between the President of the Republic and his Prime Minister: the Head of State is the "head of the armed forces," while his head of government is "responsible for national defense." But the president's "reserved domain" —whose prerogatives were clarified by decree in 1996—has, in practice, never been shaken by anything other than "snags," the historian believes.

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