When in trouble, reach for nuclear submarines. President Nicolas Sarkozy, derided by the French as a lightweight,

rushed off at the end of March to launch Le Terrible, the fourth in France's fourth generation of such submarines. Thus he seizes the torch of "massive retaliation" from his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, who said that a state-terrorist onslaught on France or even the EU might require a nuclear missile lobbed into the perp's presumptive backyard, wherever that might be. Le Terrible is itself powered by a nuclear reactor, and the range of its sixteen missiles, each armed with three warheads, is just under 5,000 miles, so M'sieu Ahmadinejad had better watch his tongue, otherwise it might be Tehran frappe.

Le Terrible's deployment brings France's full menu of warheads to 348, of which 288 are on submarines and fifty on air-launched cruise missiles. There are ten old-fashioned bombs.

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