Hacker News Reader

Surprisingly, France has the worlds third largest nuclear arsenal at 300 weapons.

Why is that surprising? Until the 90s France had a nuclear triad, but the land component was dropped. We used to have more warheads, but still need quite a few to keep global coverage through submarines and aircrafts...

It's surprising because China has a billion people and a bunch of competing regional interests. Since WWII, the PRC has been at war or had armed conflict with India, Vietnam, the ROC, the UN (Korean war) and the USSR. There are also the ongoing territorial disputes in the South China Sea and continued border unrest on the Indian border.

France doesn't have any significant regional disputes around territory and hasn't been to war with its neighbours in about 75 years.

Yet France still has more nuclear warheads than China (officially, at least).

China is not surrounded by rivals, its also never been conquered. The chinese do not have the same existential fear that france does.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com