Chirac looks like he is taking aim at Iran, among others, via Reuters:

“The leaders of states who would use terrorist means against us, as well as those who would consider using in one way or another weapons of mass destruction, must understand that they would lay themselves open to a firm and adapted response on our part,” Chirac said during a visit to a nuclear submarine base in northwestern France. “This response could be a conventional one. It could also be of a different kind.”

“Against a regional power, our choice would not be between inaction or annihilation,” Chirac said in his first major speech on France’s nuclear arms strategy since 2001. “The flexibility and reactivity of our strategic forces would enable us to exercise our response directly against its centers of power and its capacity to act.”

Of course, this being France, it is uncertain whether Chirac’s words have practical meaning for his country, and we would defer to others who study these matters in depth. However, this does sound like some sort of new strategic doctrine to us. For example, the US has an official policy, as stated in this White House WMD strategy paper from 2002, of response to an attack by those who

Nuclear response to a WMD attack is an explicit option for the US. However, we have been unable to locate a reference by a head of state to the use of nuclear weapons in response to a non-WMD terrorist attack, which is what Chirac is including in his threat. Indeed, the conventional wisdom has been the opposite, that nuclear weapons would not be used in response to conventional terrorist attacks, as this Center for Nonproliferation Studies note suggests. Hence, Chirac’s position appears to us something new.

Here’s a question posed by Chirac’s new strategic thinking. Hezbollah is an instrument of Iran and uses “terrorist means” every day against Israel. What would the French President say if Israel invoked the Chirac Doctrine against Iran?

Addendum

It seems to us likely that the outlandish and bellicose rhetoric of thuggish true believer Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is on Chirac’s mind, as it is everyone’s today. So what is the difference between Iraq and Iran? For a reflection on that issue, we turn to VP Dick Cheney’s MTP appearance of September 8, 2002:

VICE PRES. CHENEY: We’re concerned about Iran and about North Korea. The president talked about them again last January in the State of the Union speech. But the thing that’s different about Iraq is its government and its regime and its past history, the fact that he has launched ballistic missiles against Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Israel, Iran. He’s twice invaded his neighbors, that he has and has used this capabilities before, in terms of the chemical weapons during the war with Iran and against the Kurds in northern Iraq. It is a qualitatively different thing. He met recently with his nuclear weapons experts — this was reported in the Iraqi press — and praised them as being the ones who were going to help him drive the American infidels back across the ocean. He has and continues to conduct himself in a way that is fundamentally threatening to the United States. Now, if he doesn’t have any significant capability, you don’t have to worry about it. He’s just a blow hard…

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a blow hard too, and he has been working non-stop to get his nukes. Is the relevant difference between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Saddam Hussein (at least as far as a US military strike is concerned) that Ahmadinejad that Iran, to date, has not made conventional war on its neighbors? What if the links between Iran, al Qaeda and September 11, as suggested by Kenneth Timmerman, are true? Could that also be one of the reasons for the promulgation of the Chirac Doctrine, to deter an Iranian-backed 9-11 in France?

UPDATE

Tony Blankley adds to our discussion of a few days ago of the Chirac Doctrine:

French President Jacque Chirac last week added a fascinating and unexpected element to the crisis by his barely veiled, unambiguous threat — while visiting France’s Ile Longue nuclear naval base in Normandy — that France might use her nuclear weapons against a country that either launched a terrorist attack against France, or cut off her “strategic supplies” (i.e. oil). The French press, from left to right, immediately stated that Chirac’s target was Iran.

Some of his left-wing domestic political opponents suggested he was fantacizing about France’s quickly fading imperial glory, merely trying to regain his footing after his poor performance during the Muslim fire-bombing riots in Paris last fall, or trying to justify the large budget of France’s “useless” nuclear force de frappe. Other observers judge (I believe quite plausibly) that Chirac is now alive to the threat of radical Islam in France, and he is prepared to threaten to go nuclear to try to stop its encouragement from outside.

The initial reports we saw did not mention the bit about a nuclear reprisal for cutting off France’s “strategic supplies” — now that’s a response to an oil embargo!

Special Bonus

Max Boot reduces our situation with Iran into a single sentence:

In sum, a terrorist-sponsoring state led by an apocalyptic lunatic will soon have the ability to incinerate Tel Aviv or New York.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 19th, 2006 at 8:18 am and is filed under EU, General, Religion, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.