Who will take you under the umbrella...

You know that old song "who will take you away with a scarf...", of course. That's pretty much the story with the French nuclear umbrella, right? As I promised last week to discuss this topic as well, here it is.

Do you realize that, technically and strategically, few of us really know what these nuclear umbrellas, shields, "patriots" and all the rest are actually about? So the way the general public perceives the episode of the French umbrella must tell us something about other things than the effectiveness of that system. Basically, it makes sense to believe that the nuclear game is centered on deterrence, not on having multiple overlapping umbrellas, right?

So what does the way we see President Macron's nuclear offer say about us? About 39% of Romanians, the National Security Barometer conducted by INSCOP last month tells us, would agree with the extension of the French nuclear umbrella. Voters of PNL and USR, young people with higher education, and urban dwellers have a higher acceptance of this scenario than other socio-demographic categories. Do you remember the new Europe vs old Europe polarization operated by President George Bush Jr. in the context of some allies' commitment to the Americans in Iraq? Could there be something similar here, among the population categories that agree with the French proposal? A kind of new NATO vs old NATO? This is where the entire public opinion dilemma actually lies. Would it be a new NATO, somehow French, somehow Franco-German, about which we don't know how it would function technically, but which would do what the old American NATO, before Donald Trump's second coming, promised it would do.

For several years now, more analysts have explored our public's pendulum between the EU and the USA, capturing an economic and social loyalty towards the EU and a security loyalty towards the USA. Some metaphorically posed the issue as a choice "between mom and dad", a comparison that at that time had some limits. Now, with everything that has happened in recent months – and certainly in recent weeks – that metaphor seems to make more and more sense, under the conditions in which the overwhelming majority of Romanians continue to bet on the Euro-Atlantic orientation. 51% of Romanians refuse France's nuclear protection. Since the justification cannot be technical, we are dealing with a positioning on a mental map. The problem is not two umbrellas, but the potential upset of the first if we were to accept the second.

And more clearly, only a quarter of Romanians would accept to host French nuclear weapons on national territory. 69% do not agree. Obviously, this would not mean that we become a nuclear power, but we most likely perceive that such a thing would make us vulnerable. We want NATO, clearly, but we want nuclear neutrality. Of course, there was no question about the extent to which there would be an agreement regarding a hypothetical hosting of American weapons of this type. There was no question because this scenario does not exist, so it is not a matter of public opinion.

75% of Romanians believe that the USA would respect Article 5 of the NATO treaty if Romania were attacked. 69% believe that, in the same scenario, Germany and France would do the same.

I said a few years ago, in the times of international optimism of that end of history that characterized the two decades between 1995 and 2015, that the world after 1989 and the specialists in international relations had almost completely forgotten the nuclear theme. We have no reference for it. Especially in our country. Our last memories are pacifism and the doctrine of non-alignment of the 80s, both burdened with a heavy ideological legacy.

Between the frustrations of a capricious and unpredictable American president and the promises of a French president at the end of his term, we fail to identify the savior. And Bruce Willis is sick... and Chuck Norris just died.