Both the French and the Brits have nukes. They're at no risk of hostile foreign invasion and everybody knows it. Entire libraries of books and whitepapers have been written about it.
If it were about self-defense: Build more nukes, build some mobile launchers capable of also launching targeting satellites, maintain the missile and submarine fleets, and your job is done. This can be done on current military budgets, or even smaller budgets.
It's not for "self defense". It's for foreign adventurism and geopolitical posturing. Like the opposite of realpolitik.
Besides, waging proxy wars is very far removed from self-defense.
Building outposts in, e.g., Cameroon to ward against Russian aggression over there is perhaps justifiable in some abstract respect, but it's rather the opposite of self-defense. (Without getting into complicated game-theoretical "we have to stop them over there so we don't fight them over here" justifications, which have long been discredited and have even become something of a joke.)
Both the French and the Brits have nukes. They're at no risk of hostile foreign invasion and everybody knows it. Entire libraries of books and whitepapers have been written about it.
If it were about self-defense: Build more nukes, build some mobile launchers capable of also launching targeting satellites, maintain the missile and submarine fleets, and your job is done. This can be done on current military budgets, or even smaller budgets.
It's not for "self defense". It's for foreign adventurism and geopolitical posturing. Like the opposite of realpolitik.