“We would be safer if we had our own nuclear arsenal,” Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, told his country’s parliament on March 7th. The reason he gave was the “profound change of American geopolitics”, a euphemism for Donald Trump’s diplomatic arson, which also required Poland to expand its conventional armed forces.

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In the worst-case (which few officials think is likely), if America were to cut off support, Britain could hang on to the missiles in its possession, probably for some years. But its future warhead and submarine plans would no longer be viable. One option for Britain would be to revive the idea of co-operation with France. In the 1970s France proposed selling submarine-launched missiles to Britain and, in the 1980s, suggested co-developing a nuclear-capable cruise missile.

That would be a dramatic step. Mr Macron’s “strategic debate” is at an early stage. 

For now, says Héloïse Fayet, research Fellow and head of the Deterrence and Proliferation program within the Security Studies Center at Ifri, a think-tank in Paris, “there are no talks about putting French nuclear weapons outside French territory”, let alone diluting French authority to use them.

“There are plenty of ideas, but we are lacking French political guidance” says Ms Fayet. That might disappoint the likes of Mr Tusk, who see a crisis brewing. Even so, Mr Trump has sparked Europe’s most profound nuclear debate since the 1950s.

> Read the full article on The Economist.