April 4, 2008 - French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced last week that he was cutting France's total nuclear capability to fewer than 300 warheads. This, he said, was a return to Charles de Gaulle's vision of minimal deterrence that would create "strength from weakness." His speech was not only, or even primarily, about French nuclear weapons. It was a call to all nations to reaffirm the commitment to nuclear disarmament.The decision by the nuclear powers to retain their cold war nuclear arsenals even in the absence of the cold war proved worse for nuclear disarmament than the war itself. It quietly set a standard for the post-cold war period.
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