France: Queueing Up

Deep in the Sahara last week, the French set off a bomb atop a tower and then studied the effects on rows of uniformed manikins lined up in parade formation and on some 1,000 mice, sheep and goats tethered around the site, including a lamb born moments after the blast. It was France's third nuclear test.

With the U.S. and Russia tacitly agreed to conduct no more atomic tests until the other does, the only atomic explosions in the last two years have been French.

Protests predictably poured in from Japan and from nearby African states. Western friends and allies of France...

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