On 5 March 2025, President Macron announced that he had "decided to open the strategic debate about using our (nuclear) deterrence to protect our allies on the European continent".
Officially, if an enemy attacks France’s "vital interests", our deterrence consists of threatening to send him first a "final warning" through a nuclear strike that would be, on principle, limited, and after that, if he continues his aggression, to deliver massive strikes on his cities.
That French first nuclear strike would turn a conventional war into a nuclear war. It would inevitably provoke a nuclear-armed enemy to retaliate with his atom bombs, or even to deliver a first strike himself. Both cases would end up with collective suicide.
Although the French people never wanted this, it is the price we must pay, today with our euros and tomorrow with our lives, for "national sovereignty". The suicidal nature of this strategy had been grasped by President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who admits in his memoirs that he had secretly resolved "never to take the initiative of an action that would lead to the annihilation of France".
If, as M. Macron wishes, France were to extend to the other European countries the imaginary protection of our supposed "nuclear umbrella", then our annihilation (provoked by his actions) would then depend on what would happen for somebody somewhere in Europe.
Meanwhile France is going to spend, in 2025, 7 billion euros simply to modernise her strike-force (which doesn’t need modernising), at a time when she has to draw on her conventional forces to support the Ukrainians’ resistance - and when France cannot manage to meet her own needs in health, social services, education and environmental protection.
We refuse to sacrifice our "vital interests", present and future, to the postulates of a nuclear strategy which is absurd, ruinous, deeply anti-democratic, illegal, criminal and suicidal. We refuse to massacre other people and commit suicide.
France needs to negotiate with the other States concerned the abolition of nuclear and radioactive weapons, as required by Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. If this does not happen, we ask that the French people be consulted on the matter, and we support the Parliamentary Bill aimed at organising a "shared-initiative" referendum on this vital question.
"Given the terrifying perspectives opening now to humankind, we can see better than ever that peace is the only struggle worth waging. This is now not a prayer but a command, an order that needs to rise from the peoples to the governments, the command to choose definitively between hell and reason." (Albert Camus, 8 August 1945)
Contact : contact@acdn.net
**
Contact
SIGNATORIES
Jean-Marie Matagne, président de l’Action des Citoyens pour le Désarmement Nucléaire (ACDN)
Fabrice Barusseau, député de la Charente-Maritime
Francis Lenne, général de brigade 2e Section
Bruno Boussagol, metteur en scène
Jean-Jacques Delfour, auteur de La condition nucléaire, L’Echappée (2016)
Yves Lenoir, auteur de La Comédie atomique, La Découverte (2016)
Rony Brauman, médecin, ex président de Médecins Sans Frontières
Jean-Luc Marchais, maire de Bussac-sur-Charente
Hendrik Davi, député des Bouches-du-Rhône
Raymonde Poncet-Monge, sénatrice du Rhône
Laurent Mucchielli, sociologue au CNRS
Françoise Boman, médecin anatomo-cyto-pathologiste
Jacques Bordé, vice-président de Pugwash-France
Kaddour Hadadi (HK), artiste
Annick Suzor-Weiner, physicienne, professeure émérite à l’Université de Paris-Saclay
Patrick Moquay, professeur à l’ÉNS du paysage de Versailles, ancien maire de Saint Pierre d’Oléron
Nicolas Delerue, président de Pugwash France
Guy Benarroche, sénateur des Bouches-du-Rhône
Jean-Pierre Desbordes, directeur d’école, vice-président d’ACDN
Bernard Norlain, général d’armée 2e Section, président d’Initiatives pour le Désarmement Nucléaire (IDN)
Marc Finaud, diplomate, auteur de L’arme nucléaire, Éliminons-la, L’Harmattan (2020), vice-président d’IDN
Jean-Luc Lefebvre, ancien officier de l’armée de l’air, chercheur en stratégie
Patrick Zahnd, professeur de droit international
André Bouny, fondateur de DEFI Viêt Nam et du Comité international de soutien aux victimes vietnamiennes de l’Agent Orange.
Monique de Marco, sénatrice de la Gironde
Roland Desbordes, ancien président de la Commission de recherche et d’information indépendantes sur la radioactivité (CRIIRAD)
Benoît Biteau, député de la Charente-Maritime
Chloé Maurel, historienne, spécialiste de l’ONU
Larbi Benchiha, cinéaste, auteur de Vent de sable et Bons baisers de Moruroa
Sylvie Justome, adjointe au maire de Bordeaux, conseillère métropolitaine
