The political construction of the French nuclear consensus
Abstract
Strategic research and historiography put forward the idea of a French national consensus on foreign and security policy based on the rallying of the left to the strike force at the end of the 1970s. This research note questions this paradigm of consensus by analyzing the process of acceptance of nuclear weapons by the political forces which were opposed to them. It notes that there has in fact never been any opposition in principle on the part of the leaders of the French left to nuclear weapons in itself, but that accepting the strike force does not a consensus since differences remain at the level of public opinion and between French political forces, particularly with regard to strategic doctrine. Membership of nuclear deterrence therefore came later than the rallies of the 1970s. The failure of the French pacifist movement against the double decision due to an ambiguous attitude of the PCF and the failure of the right to counter François Mitterrand on security issues, allow the latter to stand as the guarantor of the so-called Gaullist strategic doctrine and man of consensus at the time of his re-election in 1988.
About the Author
Yannick Pincé is associate professor of history and geography in CPGE at the Jean-François Millet high school in Cherbourg-en-Cotentin. A doctoral student in contemporary history at the University of Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle (ICEE - ED 625) under the supervision of Prof. Frédéric Bozo, he is writing a doctoral thesis on the French strategic debate in the 1980s.
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