ABSTRACT
The riddle stems from the contemporary, and apparently growing, divergence between French and German strategic thinking. The "new" one, by contrast, exposes a cleavage not simply on the mechanisms of deterrence, but on the very purpose of nuclear weaponry for the safeguarding of European security. The Atlantic Alliance has for some three decades been wrestling with the problem of how to maximize the effectiveness, or credibility, of extended nuclear deterrence in an era of disappeared United States strategic superiority. By the 1970s, particularly when Helmut Schmidt was occupying the position of minister of defense, it appeared as if German and American positions were converging on the merits of raising the nuclear threshold as high as possible. The more important European allies, Britain and France, could and did seek additional assurance in the creation of their own "independent" nuclear deterrents—an independence that may have been, even in the French case, more apparent than real.
