Response to the article ‘Unfit for purpose: reassessing the development and deployment of French nuclear weapons (1956–74)’ by Pelopidas and Philippe

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Notes

¹ Benoît Pelopidas and Sébastien Philippe, “Unfit for Purpose: Reassessing the Development and Deployment of French Nuclear Weapons (1956–74)”, Cold War History 21, no. 3, (2021): 243–260.

² We suppose that the response will be referenced as Dominique Mongin and Maurice Vaïsse, “Response to the article ‘Unfit for purpose: reassessing the development and deployment of French nuclear weapons (1956–74)’ by Pelopidas and Philippe”, Cold War History 23:3, 2023

³ Pierre Billaud and Venance Journé, ‘The Real Story Behind the Making of the French Hydrogen Bomb: Chaotic, Unsupported, but Successful’, Non-Proliferation Review 15, no. 2 (2008): 353–72.

⁴ For a full statement of this stance, see Benoît Pelopidas, Repenser les choix nucléaires (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2022), chapter 7.

⁵ Among many other references, see Naomi Oreskes, Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shapes What We Do and Don’t Know about the Ocean (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020); Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth About Tobacco Smoke and Global Warming (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010) and Kjølv Egeland and Benoît Pelopidas, ‘No such thing as a free donation? Research funding and conflicts of interest in nuclear weapons policy analysis’, International Relations, (2022): 1–23, https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221140000.

⁶ Jacques Hymans, ‘Nuclear France: Grandeur or Mirage?’, H-Diplo | ISSF Review Essay 59 on Special Issue on Nuclear History, Cold War History 21, no. 3 (2021): 243–336, https://issforum.org/essays/59 (accessed 12 May, 2023).

⁷ Céline Jurgensen and Dominique Mongin, eds., France and Nuclear Deterrence: A Spirit of Resistance, Recherches & Documents N°1/2020 CEA and FRS, 2, https://www.frstrategie.org/sites/default/files/documents/publications/recherches-et-documents/2020/202001.pdf (accessed 12 May, 2023).

⁸ Rapport d’information 560 on the modernisation of French nuclear forces, submitted on 23 May 2017 on behalf of the foreign affairs, defence and armed forces committee of the French Senate, 127, https://www.senat.fr/rap/r16-560/r16-560.html (accessed 6 November, 2022).

⁹ CIENS teachers and guest lecturers, http://www.geographie.ens.fr/-enseignants-et-intervenants-du-ciens-356-.html (accessed 6 November, 2022).

¹⁰ CEA, La Direction des Applications Militaires (CEA/DAM) au cœur de la dissuasion nucléaire française (CEA, 2020), 136, https://www.cea.fr/presse/Documents/actualites/direction-applications-militaires-cea-dissuasion-nucleaire-france.pdf (accessed 12 May, 2023); Dominique Mongin, Dissuasion et simulation (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2018), 6.

¹¹ On the impossibility of interpreting what de Gaulle wanted, see: Julian Jackson, Une certaine idée de la France: A life of Charles de Gaulle (Cambridge: Belknap University Press, 2018), 573–4; Charles de Gaulle (London: Haus, 2003), 55–7. On Olivier Guichard’s attempts at interpreting those silences, see Maurice Grassin, Olivier Guichard (Paris: Siloe, 1996), 66–7.

¹² Austin R. Cooper, ‘Saharan Fallout: French Explosions in Algeria and the Politics of Nuclear Risk during African Decolonisation (1960–66)’, (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2022), 16–17.

¹³ Pelopidas, Repenser les choix nucléaires, 233–4.

¹⁴ Sten Rynning, Changing Military Doctrine: Presidents and Military Power in Fifth Republic France 1958–2000 (London: Praeger, 2002), 39–41.

¹⁵ Matthew Jones, The Official History of the UK Strategic Nuclear Deterrent, Volume I: From the V-bomber era to the Arrival of Polaris, 1945–64 (London: Routledge, 2017); Matthew Jones, The Official History of the UK Strategic Nuclear Deterrent, Volume II: The Labour Government and the Polaris Programme, 1964–70 (London: Routledge, 2017).

¹⁶ Sheldon Stern, The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory: Myths versus Reality (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 5.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this as well as the original article was supported by the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche under the VULPAN project (grant 17-CE39-0001-01).