"Preventing war, making it unlikely, preventing aggression against our vital interests: these are the classic raisons d'être of the French nuclear deterrent." The definition given by Nicolas Roche in his book "Pourquoi la dissuasion" (Presses universitaires de France, 2017) also sums up this concept, of which he is a recognised specialist, for other democratic countries. A former director of strategic affairs at the Quai d'Orsay, Nicolas Roche has been France's ambassador to Iran since 2022, a country long suspected of wanting to acquire nuclear weapons.
A-bomb, H-bomb, deterrence, proliferation, disarmament, delivery systems... The relatively short history of nuclear weapons has been written in the spotlight of current events and public opinion around the world since the final weeks of the Second World War.
1945: GADGET BOMBS, LITTLE BOY AND FAT MAN
The first test of an atomic bomb took place on 16 July 1945 in New Mexico, in the United States. The result of the "Manhattan Project" launched in 1942, carried out secretly despite the involvement of tens of thousands of people, the weapon was called "Gadget". It was a nuclear fission A-bomb. The principle had been developed in France in 1939 by a team including Frédéric Joliot-Curie, whose work had been interrupted by the armistice of 1940.
Three weeks after this conclusive test, the new American president, Harry Truman, decided to drop a bomb called "Little Boy" on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. On the 9th, "Fat Man" exploded over Nagasaki. On 2 September, Japan surrendered and the United States showed the world the power of their new weapon.
The United States, the only power in possession of atomic weapons at the time, already intended to limit their proliferation. President Truman proposed that the fledgling United Nations Organisation (UNO) take control of this weapon, eventually transferring the American arsenal to it. This 1946 "Baruch plan" was rejected by Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. The Soviet Union carried out its first test in August 1949, a few months after the creation of NATO. The Cold War was well and truly underway.
1950S-1960S: THE PROLIFERATION
At the same time, other countries also carried out their first tests: the United Kingdom in 1952, France in 1960 and China in 1964. Seeing that they were not as far ahead of the USSR as they had hoped, the United States pushed ahead with their research and in 1952 tested an even more powerful type of atomic bomb, the H-bomb, this time using nuclear fusion.
On 12 January 1954, US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles gave a speech that would become known as the "Dulles Doctrine": any attack (conventional or otherwise) against a NATO member country would trigger massive and unrestrained nuclear retaliation, far greater than the initial attack.
This doctrine worked in a context of American nuclear superiority. But the USSR was gradually acquiring the means to deploy its bomb, the H-bomb and the "second strike" capability (essential for deterrence) thanks to its nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBN). It has therefore reached the same level as its adversary. Successively, two major Cold War crises rendered the Dulles Doctrine obsolete.
1958-1963: THE BERLIN AND CUBA CRISES
At the end of November 1958, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev issued an ultimatum to the West: they must resolve the Berlin problem within 6 months. Since the post-war period, the German capital, part of the Democratic Republic of Germany (GDR) aligned with Moscow, had been divided between three sectors occupied by the Western camp (American, British and French) and one by the Soviets. The Soviets were worried about the massive flight of East Germans to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), and NATO's desire to deploy nuclear missiles on the latter's territory.
But Khrushchev's meetings with his American counterparts Dwight D. Eisenhower and then John F. Kennedy came to nothing. The Russian alternated between nuclear threats and offers of peace. Then, in 1961, East Germans and Soviets built the Berlin Wall, just as the East-West confrontation was gaining a new front: Cuba.
While the Berlin crisis lasted five years, the so-called "Cuban missile crisis" was settled in a fortnight, after reaching a major intensity and giving the whole world a glimpse of the possibility of a large-scale nuclear confrontation. At the end of 1958, the communist Fidel Castro took power on the Caribbean island, aligning himself with the USSR and ousting a regime subservient to the United States. In April 1961, the US attempted to overthrow Castro with the Bay of Pigs landing, but it was a fiasco. In November, while the situation in Berlin was becoming tense, the Americans installed ballistic missiles in two NATO countries, Turkey and Italy, within range of the USSR.
In response, Khrushchev deployed nuclear missiles in Cuba. The Americans discovered this on 14 October 1962. On 24 October, they set up a blockade of the island. American ships tracked Soviet submarines, a US bomber was shot down without Kennedy retaliating, and tension mounted by the hour... But the two enemy leaders held direct talks and reached a compromise. On 29 October, in exchange for the withdrawal of Russian missiles from Cuba, the Americans agreed not to invade the island and to withdraw missiles stationed in Europe.
Following these two crises, the Americans adopted a new approach: the McNamara doctrine, named after Kennedy's Secretary of State, replaced the Dulles doctrine. Graduated response" replaced "massive retaliation". The response would therefore be adapted to the threat, without massive destruction of the two belligerents. The "balance of terror" that was already in place was reduced in intensity, favouring "peaceful coexistence" between the two superpowers, which would last until the end of the Cold War.
FROM 1968: THE TIME OF TREATIES
These serious crises and the proliferation of nuclear weapons - in terms of the number of warheads in the arsenals of the "big two" and the number of countries seeking to acquire them - prompted the UN to create the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1957, with the mission of preventing the use of nuclear energy for military purposes.
The 1er The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was signed on 1 July 1968 and entered into force in 1970. In concrete terms, the nuclear-weapon States (NWS) before 1 July 1968 were obliged to ratify the Treaty.er On 1 January 1967, the United States, the USSR, the United Kingdom, France and China pledged not to transfer nuclear weapons to any other country and to negotiate a disarmament treaty. The non-nuclear-weapon States promised not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons. 93 States signed the Treaty at the time, and 191 are parties to it today. France, like China, only joined the Treaty in 1992.
As early as the 1970s, the United States and the USSR signed several SALT arms control treaties (for Strategic Arms Limitation Talks), then START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) in the 1990s. In 2003, the SORT Treaty (Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty) enters into force between the two countries. In early 2011, the New STARTalso between these two parties, comes into force for a period of ten years. All these agreements have gradually reduced the arsenal of the two superpowers.
NINE COUNTRIES TO BE EQUIPPED BY 2024
In the meantime, other countries have acquired nuclear weapons: Israel (although the country has never mentioned it), Pakistan, India and North Korea (which left the NPT in 2003). There are therefore officially 9 nuclear powers in 2024.
Four types of delivery system are used for the possible use of the atomic bomb: intercontinental ballistic missiles, intermediate-range ballistic missiles, aircraft and nuclear-powered ballistic missiles. According to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), an association set up in 1945 by Manhattan Project researchers to share knowledge about nuclear weapons, by 2023 only China will have all four delivery systems.
France, Russia and the United States have renounced intermediate-range missiles, but possess the other three delivery systems. Along with China, they are the only countries with intercontinental-range missiles. Most of the others make do with intermediate-range missiles and aircraft-delivered weapons, with only the United Kingdom having SNLEs. There are gaps in information about North Korea.
According to the FASIn 2024, Russia will have the most nuclear warheads, with 5,580, followed by the United States (5,044), China (500), France (290), the United Kingdom (225), India and Pakistan (170 each), Israel (90) and North Korea (50).
