This is getting a bit off-topic, but go back in time 50 or 60 years: Ask the citizens of West Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Italy, (neutral) Austria, etc., whether Force de Frappe kept them from Soviet domination.
(Also ask whether the French would actually have used nuclear weapons to stop a Soviet non-nuclear attack on France. That's relevant because in a conventional war without U.S. forces, the Warsaw Pact forces could have rolled to the Channel in weeks if not days.)
No, it was NATO that served as the real deterrent to the Soviets. NATO was largely (and expensively) underwritten by the U.S. Le Grand Charles [de Gaulle] withdrew France from the NATO military alliance in the early 1960s. That freed up who knows how much in the way of French resources, with France still effectively still living under the protection provided by NATO.
Personal note: When I was a kid, my dad, a U.S. Air Force officer, was stationed in France; we lived "on the economy" in a little farm village, where my sisters and I went to the local schools and as a result were bilingual. We were upset when we thought we were going to have to move back to the U.S., and leave our friends, sooner than scheduled because of de Gaulle's announced intention to kick out U.S. forces. (As it turned out, that didn't happen until after our scheduled move back to the U.S.)
> Also ask whether the French would actually have used nuclear weapons to stop a Soviet non-nuclear attack on France
I dunno whether the French would have, but I know the Americans would have. It was US policy through much of the Cold War that conventional forces in Europe were only to be a "tripwire" to trigger a nuclear response, rather than a force strong enough to contain a Soviet attack on their own. This allowed the US and other NATO nations to economize on conventional arms and avoid having to conscript massive numbers of men.
I don't have any specific information about this, but somehow I doubt that the French atomic capability (Force de Frappe) would have been enough to destroy the USSR as a functioning society, in contrast to the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which was eminently capable of doing the job. The French nukes therefore would have had limited value as a deterrent against the Soviets.
Try this thought experiment:
First, recall the Soviets' ability to absorb fearful military punishment, as well as their willingness to act brutally in eastern- and central Europe during and after WW2; in East Germany in 1953; in Hungary in 1956; and in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Second, imagine that in the 1950s or 1960s the Soviets had invaded Germany --- but also imagine that there was no effective NATO protection because (hypothetically) the U.S. had gone isolationist.
Third, assume that the Soviets had punched through Germany; reached the Rhine; and pushed through into France.
OK, now let's assume for the sake of argument that in response, the French had nuked the invading Soviet forces, but not the USSR homeland (for fear of provoking massive Soviet retaliation), using only small, tactical nukes.
It's not unreasonable to think that the Soviets would have responded in turn along much the same lines as they did in WWII --- but this time with their own nuclear weapons --- by obliterating the French armed forces, and probably a French city or three to make sure the message got through.
The French would (sensibly) have surrendered, of course. The Soviets then would have done much as they did in eastern Germany after WWII: They'd have carted off everything useful that they could, as war booty (euphemistically described as "reparations"). They probably would have shipped thousands of people off to slave-labor camps in the gulag, most of whom would not be seen nor heard from ever again. They'd have settled in to administer the ruined France as yet another impoverished Soviet vassal state under a Communist puppet government.
So France's nuclear Force de Frappe likely wasn't a real deterrent to the Soviets, but instead was merely anti-American and anti-British posturing by de Gaulle, safe behind what he knew would be the protective shield of NATO military power.
(Do de Gaulle's attitude and actions remind anyone else of what Hamid Karzai has been doing lately?)
Also ask whether the French would actually have used
nuclear weapons to stop a Soviet non-nuclear attack on
France.
From what I've read, during the cold war many countries developed short-range, small yield nuclear weapons. American examples are some of the most famous, like the Davy Crockett missile.
The thinking was, for the same reason France might not use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear attack, the Soviets might not use large nuclear weapons against a small nuclear weapon attack.
When you compare the US and the French system, you don't get to just say "well, they did it why can't we?" as if that question exists in a vacuum. We have a defense program which is a massive government expenditure -- which pre-empts other government expenditures such as single-payer health care -- so a fair comparison would have to look at the fact that the French had a de facto defense subsidy.
If each country in Western Europe had been responsible for building up the kind of deterrent force which we were able to present, the calculus for a single-payer program would change. Certainly Force de Frappe was a strategic asset. Can you concede that without NATO (dominated by the US) the French investment in defense would have needed a drastic increase in order to fill that vacuum? If there were no NATO, at the least I think you can acknowledge that all of Germany would have been a Soviet client, putting France on a front line against the Warsaw Pact countries.
'Force de Frappe'