To expand a stockpile of both the useless and the mindlessly murderous in a military sense would seem to be a wasteful exercise best contemplated in the psychiatric ward.  But such a ward is increasingly occupied by the world’s leaders, and war is on their lost minds.  As Israel and the United States continue their crime of aggression against Iran, other countries are looking at what they have in their inventories.  The eyes of militarists are sparkling with anticipation, notably regarding nuclear weapons.

France, which sees itself as one of the eminent nuclear powers, albeit in fourth place behind Russia, the United States and China, is keen to push up the numbers.   The wiser thing, surely, would be to discourage the acquisition of more nuclear weapons.  But the world is dangerous, and danger is always the alibi for policies that aggravate the disease rather than cure it.  “The next 50 years,” France’s President Emmanuel Macron explained in a speech to naval officers in front of a nuclear submarine at the Île Longue base near Brest in Brittany, “will be an era of nuclear weapons.”

In an event that might have garnered more global attention but for the illegal war being waged against Iran by the United States and Israel, Macron was initially flown with an escort to the base, and, with solemnity, addressed military personnel and the top brass in a grim facility that might have excited Ian Fleming. 

Platitudes were not to be avoided.  “To be free one must be feared, and to be feared one must be powerful.”  Accordingly, France would increase its nuclear inventory and “no longer release figures on our nuclear arsenal, as we have done in the past.” (How coquettish.)  The president........

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