Pierre Gallois was a retired French general and the intellectual spokesman for the French nuclear program. His argument, as eventually published, was that when two nations are armed with nuclear weapons, even if unequally, the status quo is unavoidable. He believed that a nuclear-armed [[France]] would no longer need to wonder if the [[United States]] would come to its defense in a nuclear crisis.[^1] Gallois was taken very seriously by the Israelis, and [[France]]'s *force de frappe* became the role model for [[Israel]]'s strategic planning and its ultimate decision not to count on the American nuclear umbrella.[^1] ### Footnotes [^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 3.