France cut its nuclear arsenal to under 300 warheads

[dbc]

Highly unlikely you can kill 80 million people in USSR with few dozens of French missiles from that era.

A Russian once told me in the USSR your distance from Red Square indicated your importance to the state. Back then USSR was Moscow, threaten Moscow and that was enough. I suspect not much has changed in that regard even today, Moscow remains the nerve center of Russia.

 

[Nefarious]

Well done France...all countries with 0 nukes should make 300 of them following this great example. No higher as that would be bad.

 

[Vergennes]

France by 2018 had already about 280 active nuclear warheads while 10 to 20 were kept in storage,nothing but just a communication stunt.

Even at the height of the cold war era,the maximum nuclear warheads France had was 500.

 

[vostok]

A Russian once told me in the USSR your distance from Red Square indicated your importance to the state. Back then USSR was Moscow, threaten Moscow and that was enough. I suspect not much has changed in that regard even today, Moscow remains the nerve center of Russia.

Well, you can say the same thing about London or almost any other capital of the European state. Moscow was one of the 3 main Soviet industrial centers. Moscow was the best prepared city in the world for the nuclear war - best ABM system and best and most spacious underground shelters. You need entire French nuclear arsenal fired simultaneously to have any chances to hit Moscow. And even if you hit - it will be the beginning of the war, not the end.

 

[Dante80]

Highly unlikely you can kill 80 million people in USSR with few dozens of French missiles from that era.

While we could certainly argue about the "actual" effectiveness of Frances' counter-value capability, the important thing to understand here is that the presence of said capability itself was a priori enough to ensure that theater containment was not an option for both the US and USSR during most of the 70's. While the argument may seem counter-intuitive at first glance, the truth of the matter is this capability helped to keep the peace in the continent.

 

[vostok]

While we could certainly argue about the "actual" effectiveness of Frances' counter-value capability, the important thing to understand here is that the presence of said capability itself was a priori enough to ensure that theater containment was not an option for both the US and USSR during most of the 70's. While the argument may seem counter-productive at first glance, the truth of the matter is that this capability helped to keep the peace in the continent.

I can agree with that. Even if 1 missile will hit the target - it is still to costly for the enemy.
It is like big predator most likely will not fight with small rabid one, even if big predator is 100 times stronger, because small one can bite off the nose or do another unpleasant damage. But we all know that France is not the rabid one, it is probably not the predator at all since pre-WW2.