French President Emmanuel Macron, seen speaking at the UN General Assembly’s 80th session in 2025, said Monday that France will grow its nuclear arsenal and start working with eight European partners on integrating security for the European continent. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo
French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that France plans to work more closely with eight European countries to improve security on the continent, which will include France increasing its nuclear arsenal.
The move comes more than a year into the Trump administration’s shift in foreign relations to work less with organizations like NATO and the United Nations, which most recently has seen President Donald Trump threaten to take Greenland by force.
Macron’s speech also came two days into the war in Iran, launched early Saturday morning by the United States and Israel, that has now seen the Middle Eastern nation launch missiles not only at Israel and U.S. bases, but other countries in the Middle East and southern Europe.
Noting that “this is not an arms race,” Macron pointed to the Iran war and the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia, which has resulted in Russian leaders threatening to attack Europe, as reasons for the moves, The Guardian reported.
France plans to work more closely with Britain, the only other nuclear power in Europe, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden and Denmark, including military exercises that include the French nuclear forces and could see France move some nuclear warheads outside the country, The New York Times reported.
“My responsibility is to ensure that our deterrence maintains — and will maintain in the future — its assured destructive power,” Macron said in the speech, which he delivered from the Ile Longue nuclear submarine base in Brittany, France.
“It is essential that our adversaries, or combination of adversaries, cannot even glimpse the possibility of hitting France without the certainty of suffering damage they would not recover from,” Macron said.
France has the fourth largest nuclear arsenal in the world, after Russia, the United States and China, and is the only nuclear power in the European Union since Britain voted to exit the bloc of nations.
Macron did not mention how big the French arsenal is right now — it is believed to be 290 warheads — and he did not say how much the size of its arsenal would grow.
France and Germany said they will set up a nuclear steering group to coordinate planning and exercises, and France will work with Britain specifically on nuclear security and deterrence.
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An Iranian woman holds a portrait of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a rally in Tehran, Iran, on March 1, 2026. Photo by Hossein Esmaeili/UPI | License Photo
