France so desperately wants to be seen as more than it is.
Although I loved their Special Ops guys who were very conservative and loved Reagan, the nation dropped out of the NATO military command structure for 43 years and only came back into the fold in 2009.
The country developed its nuclear arsenal mainly to defend itself from Germany — not the Soviet Union. And for that reason they didn’t want their nuclear weapons included in any arms control agreements between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.