Chirac has big brass ones.

French president Chirac has said that a state-sponsored terrorist attack could provoke a nuclear response from the French. Though RR is generally against nuclear attacks, the French seem to remember what nukes are for, deterrence. I've always said that the French are superior negotiators and diplomats, and here is a case in point.

One week after the Iranians, the supporters of Hizbullah, removed the UN seals from their Uranium processing equipment, Chirac is essentially saying: give a nuke to a terrorist, and you sacrifice every military base in your country, and possibly a good chunk of Tehran.

Takes some of the shine off the Iranian-North Korean-Pakistani nuclear project (of which only Iran now lacks a nuke).

Bravo, Chirac. Well played. If we could get Bush to support that statement with one of his own, we'd go a long way toward mending the military rift across the Atlantic, and get back to the only thing good about the cold war (other than that we won), cooperation of modern democracies on toward a common goal: the continued delay of nuclear proliferation until we can come up with an effective detection and protection device.

I'll be interested to see whether the acquisition of a nuke by a non-conventional (read reckless and semi-suicidal) state nudges the EU toward cooperation in the nuclear shield. No rational state = no nuclear deterrence, no M.A.D., and the eventual necessity of a defense.

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