The balance of terror, based on a strategic theory: an aggressor, whoever he is, cannot deliver the first blow, even a devastating one, without being sure of immediately receiving an even more devastating one. My objective is not to win the war but to prevent it by depriving it of all rationality. No one could win it. It is a logical madness but which has nothing scientific about it. To be scientific, a theory must have been tested and substantiated many times over… and you will admit that it will be difficult to relive the last seventy years.
>> REPLAY – War in Ukraine: Is Vladimir Putin panicking? The Franceinfo Talk debate
It’s a fact, put forward by my supporters: since my “invention”, there have been no direct conflicts between great powers. However, I have not succeeded in preventing them from confronting each other indirectly via their interposed allies: the Korean War, the Vietnam War and, now, war in Ukraine and the Russian President’s threats to use all the means at his disposal.
Every morning at 7:26 a.m. @mdups slips “In the skin of the info” ️
Today, Marie Dupin embodies the balance of terror: she is “nuclear deterrence”. “My goal is not to win the war but to prevent it, because no one could win it.” pic.twitter.com/RLH0kTsZ6N
— franceinfo (@franceinfo) October 11, 2022
At the international level, my rule is clear: a State which does not have the atomic bomb cannot be attacked with such a bomb. Knowing that only nine countries have atomic weapons, 90% owned by the United States and Russia. But each country has its own doctrine. France, for example, the only nuclear power in Europe, should only use the bomb to protect “vital interests of the country”in “extreme circumstances of self-defense”. As for the Russian doctrine, it provides for the use of the A-bomb only if the country is “offensive”, endangering its existence. A notion of “put to danger” as broad as it is vague, left to the free interpretation of Vladimir Putin. The Russian president has two types of nuclear weapons at his disposal: strategic and tactical weapons.
In other words, the strategy, the deterrence, is me. Nuclear weapons, called tactical, are not intended to prevent war but to win battles. They are only “low power”, a few kilotons… If they were used, they would not sign the end of humanity but would constitute a point of no return. A red line never crossed since Hiroshima and Nagasaki and which, according to all the experts, has never been so close since 1962 and the Cuban missile crisis. To the point that the American president is talking about risk this week “apocalypse”.