Worldwide weapony post-T2K

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Originally Posted by 95th Rifleman

France has a significant military, both conventional and nuclear with a strong naval capability. As long as they stayed neutral I don't honestly see the soviets gunning for them. Why risk bringing them into the war when they are happy to sit out and watch?

The Soviets play for the long term. If France escapes significant nuking, then France will become a dominant power on the Continent. While a dominant France is better than a dominant Germany, dominant France isn't much better. Everything Mo has been writing is perfect justification for knocking France down to size. It's just not in the best interests of the Soviets to leave France functional. Once the Anglo-Americans and the Soviets have had their surgical strategic exchange, de Gaulle's equation about tearing off an arm loses its logic. By the end of 1997, there aren't any targets left in the USSR that are the equivalent of Paris, Brest, etc. The Soviets have more to lose by leaving France relatively intact than they do by knocking France into the mud with everyone else.

None of the arguments being made here about France's arms industry, potential to support NATO, potential to be a post-War major power, etc. will have escaped the Soviets. Every argument made for France's capabilities is an argument in favor of destroying Paris, Brest, major air bases, and throwing in some EMP to knock out the French nuclear power plants. Without oil and without electricity, France's arms industry is going to look a lot like everybody's else's.

The francophiles among us should look on the situation as evidence of standing. France is an important Western power. Therefore, France gets pounded along with everybody else because the Soviets won't tolerate any Western power standing head-and-shoulders above the rest in the aftermath just for the sake of respecting neutrality. The French nuclear arsenal might ensure that the Soviets don't hit France as hard as they hit Canada; but the French aren't going to go overboard in retaliatory strikes, either, since the Soviet nuclear capability vastly overmatches France's nuclear capability.


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