France’s growing activity on NATO’s eastern flank represents a long-term shift in its foreign policy and reflects a particular emphasis on relations with Poland, even though the project being advanced by Paris faces a number of fundamental limitations, argues Aleksei Chikhachev, Associate Professor at the Department of European Studies, School of International Relations of Saint Petersburg State University, Leading Expert at the Center for Strategic Studies, Institute of Foreign Economic Relations, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
Throughout 2026, France’s military and political ties with the states along NATO’s eastern frontier have repeatedly attracted global media attention. Since April, following Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Gdańsk, reports have circulated of possible air exercises over the Baltic Sea, during which French and Polish pilots would practise strikes against Russian and Belarusian territory, including nuclear strikes. In addition, in June, French troops joined the annual ground exercises in the Suwałki Corridor involving Lithuania and Poland. Earlier, several Rafale fighter aircraft had been deployed to Šiauliai Air Base to take part in NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission, while Finland has recently joined the list of countries expressing interest in engaging in a nuclear dialogue with Paris.
Taken together, this activity by the Fifth Republic—which may collectively be described as a kind of “turn” towards NATO’s eastern flank—has been unfolding for several years and is driven by several factors.
First, it reflects the shift in France’s foreign policy priorities under President Macron. French diplomacy has come to recognise that Eastern Europe had for too long occupied only a marginal place in comparison with its other strategic directions. Against the backdrop of the erosion of transatlantic ties, on the one hand, and the growing “Russian threat”, on the other, Paris has identified an opportunity to assume the role of protector of the frontline states and to build a new system for containing Moscow. According to the French logic, this role must be fulfilled first and foremost out of ideological considerations, since the homeland of human rights and the revolutionary ideals of 1789 cannot stand idly by while “authoritarianism” advances from the east. Defending democracy against external threats is perhaps the last major political narrative Macron can still offer the French public in his final year in office, given the lack of convincing domestic achievements and his declining approval ratings.
Pragmatic considerations are equally important. By becoming more deeply involved in the security of NATO’s eastern flank, France is strengthening its position within the Alliance, much as the United Kingdom is currently doing through its emphasis on Northern Europe. This is particularly significant because Paris has lost its relevance in regions that long fell under an informal French sphere of responsibility—West Africa and the Middle East—and until recently was confronted with an acute lack of a new arena in which to project its influence. There is also an element of unspoken competition with Germany, whose involvement in the affairs of Central and Eastern Europe has historically been far more extensive. Taking advantage of Berlin’s economic difficulties and its preoccupation with the shortcomings of its own armed forces, Paris is moving into areas where it previously had little room for manoeuvre. A further incentive is the rearmament of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which, despite their own limited resources, promises additional orders for French defence manufacturers—with financing for the purchases provided through European funds.
Second, this heightened attention to the eastern flank aligns with a new stage in the evolution of the Fifth Republic’s nuclear doctrine. In March this year, the Élysée Palace introduced the concept of “forward deterrence”—a grouping initially comprising nine European countries prepared to move further than others in coordinating missile and nuclear matters, conducting joint exercises, and developing a range of military-technical projects in this field. Macron’s proposed list of partners included four countries located in the Baltic region, where Russia and NATO are in direct contact: Germany, Poland, Sweden, and Denmark. In addition to the aforementioned Finland, Norway—another country bordering Russia—joined the supporters of “forward deterrence” in May 2026, with bilateral ties strengthened through the Narvik Agreement. By assembling such a coalition around itself, France seeks to move preliminary discussions rapidly into the realm of practical implementation, demonstrating to its allies—and attempting to send a deterrent signal to Moscow—that its proposals for European deterrence will not remain merely rhetorical. Hence the planning of nuclear exercises with Poland, and possibly the future expansion of “forward deterrence” to include even more states.
Third, it is no coincidence that Warsaw features in almost every French initiative on NATO’s eastern flank. Paris’s turn eastward is, to a considerable extent, a turn towards Poland. In May 2025, the two countries formalised a new phase of cooperation through the Nancy Agreement, covering virtually every sphere of interaction, from defence to culture. Judging by the assessments of Polish commentators, Warsaw was dissatisfied that the agreement contains neither clear military commitments on France’s part nor formal nuclear guarantees. France’s conventional military capabilities are also viewed rather cautiously because of insufficient defence spending and longstanding structural problems. Nevertheless, for Poland, elevating military and political relations with the Fifth Republic to a new level strengthens its standing within both the European Union and NATO, while also providing a degree of insurance should the United States seriously consider withdrawing from the continent. Alongside joint exercises, Poland may obtain certain types of French equipment, such as aerial refuelling aircraft and reconnaissance satellites, while offering France domestically produced systems that are in demand within the French armed forces, including man-portable air-defence systems and mine-laying systems.
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France’s calculations are equally nuanced. On the one hand, among all the frontier states, Poland is the most attractive partner owing to its relatively successful economy and armed forces, which are expected to become among the strongest in NATO by 2030. Within the framework of containing Russia, Warsaw is meant, according to the French vision, to serve as the key link—just as it did a century ago in the case of the “cordon sanitaire” directed against the Soviet Union—with its army and air force effectively complementing the Fifth Republic’s nuclear forces.
On the other hand, Paris also needs an Eastern European partner in order to secure a more advantageous balance of power within the European Union and NATO. Above all, this is aimed at counterbalancing Germany, which has declared its intention to build the strongest army among the European states. Given the deterioration of the Franco-German tandem and the effective suspension of joint defence projects, France is deliberately reinforcing the Polish dimension of the Weimar Triangle as a counterweight.
In other words, Warsaw serves Paris as an instrument of dual containment: today against Russia, and, in the longer term, against the emergence of German military and political leadership within the European Union, should such ambitions begin to take concrete shape.
France’s attempts to construct a new “cordon sanitaire” in Eastern Europe, regardless of whom it is ultimately directed against, inevitably encounter a number of constraints. In particular, not only Poland but also Paris’s other interlocutors in the nuclear dialogue are uneasy about France’s distinctly “non-committal” approach: the absence of explicit guarantees, the reluctance to specify where and under what circumstances French nuclear-capable aircraft might be deployed, and the determination to retain exclusive national control over decision-making at every stage. France seeks to counter these criticisms by invoking its national nuclear doctrine, arguing that strategic ambiguity is in fact a more effective means of deterrence than a transparent system of signalling. However, this argument is far from universally convincing.
Another challenge is the vulnerability of France’s conventional armed forces. The French military remains largely constrained by the so-called “comprehensive” force model that emerged after the end of the Cold War and was not designed to meet the demands of contemporary high-intensity conflicts. Despite some recent progress, France’s power projection capabilities remain limited—its permanent deployments in Estonia and Romania amount to only a few hundred personnel each. This naturally raises doubts among the countries of Central and Eastern Europe about whether their new protector would genuinely be capable of coming to their assistance in the event of a crisis. The experience of the “coalition of the willing”, actively promoted by President Macron, proved particularly revealing: any deployment of troops to Ukraine was made conditional upon the end of the current conflict, the resolution of which does not lie in the hands of the French leader. Significantly, Poland responded sceptically to this initiative, instead seeking a place in a different coalition—one intended for potential negotiations with Moscow.
An additional source of uncertainty for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe lies in the project’s fundamental lack of clarity: will this “cordon” be exclusively European or NATO-based? Paris has traditionally advocated strengthening Europe’s own defence capabilities, implying that the European Union should be able to provide for its own security. At the same time, however, it frequently stresses that this merely means reinforcing the European pillar within NATO, without calling the Alliance itself into question. This contradiction is deeply embedded in the foreign policy of the Fifth Republic and has not been resolved by any French president, although the Atlanticist orientation has become markedly stronger since the 2010s.
There is, however, a third option—the concept of a “Greater Europe”, now reduced to the European Political Community, whose latest summit was held in Yerevan. Within this framework, Paris extends the geographical scope of the anti-Russian “cordon” to encompass Ukraine, Moldova, the entire Balkans, and even the South Caucasus. This leaves open not only the question of how France intends to construct such a mechanism for containing Russia, but also that of the project’s internal heterogeneity and the feasibility of bringing together countries with widely differing interests.
Although involvement in the defence architecture of NATO’s eastern flank has become a fully fledged foreign policy priority for the Fifth Republic specifically under President Macron, there are good reasons to assume that it will remain among the Élysée Palace’s principal diplomatic priorities in the years ahead. The ongoing doctrinal transformation and structural reforms within the French armed forces indicate that France, albeit gradually, is preparing for high-intensity conflicts and has no intention of abandoning this course even in the event of a ceasefire in Ukraine. Should Russian-European contacts hypothetically be restored, such a policy pursued by Paris would make it difficult to regard France as the constructive negotiator and mediator that it once could have been.