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France's Nukes
Spare a thought for poor old France. It spent much of the past year defending Saddam Hussein's regime, destroying its relationship with its most powerful ally in the process.
It cosied up to Russia, made flattering noises towards China, and launched a charm offensive in north Africa.
It woos the Muslim world with its unrelenting hostility to Israel. Though it is a rich country, France thinks of itself as a defender of the rights of the world's poor: Its leaders sympathise with the anti-Globalisation mobs, even while their policies do as much harm as any to the prospects of poor farmers.
So it might come as a surprise to some that despite all this, France can foresee a future where it might have enemies (and no, not the United States.)
According to reports in French newspapers this week, France will in future target its nuclear arsenal on rogue states that threaten it with weapons of mass destruction.
This is quite a turnaround for France, who developed nuclear capability under Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s to defend itself from the Soviet Union while remaining a semi-detached and often irritating member of NATO (some things never change).
Left-wing daily Liberation claimed that France's nuclear philosophy had recently undergone a revolution, to be announced by president Chirac in the next few weeks:
The Gaullist doctrine of deterrence - 'from the weak to the strong' - has been replaced by the doctrine 'the strong to the insane'.
For the first time, nuclear arms are aimed not only at states with atomic capability but also at powers that will be able to use chemical and biological weapons against France.
The report also claimed that China would also be considered a potential aggressor, albeit in the long term.
According to Britain's Independent, president Chirac's office has issued a partial denial of the report. The Indie adds that France will retain the option of first strike against regional powers that threaten it.
It will be interesting to see how France's allies respond to these developments. Some in NATO may see it as more French grandstanding about its independence from the US. Others may welcome it as a realistic admission of the threat posed by rogue states with weapons of mass destruction.
Washington could even take comfort from claims in the Telegraph that France is considering developing 'battlefield nukes' similiar to those proposed by the US.
Perhaps it's a belated realisation from France's leadership that feeding the crocodile in the hope that it will eat you last is not an effective strategy for survival in the 21st century.
