Sunday Times 2
If the US nuclear umbrella over Europe collapses, will it trigger a Euro-bomb?
View(s):By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS (IPS) – The Trump administration’s hostile attitude towards Western Europe—and the threat to pull out of the 32-member military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)—signifies the danger of losing the longstanding protection of the US nuclear umbrella over Europe.
Jana Puglierin, director of the German office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, was quoted as saying, “Trump may, or may not, want to leave NATO officially, but he has every means to undermine NATO.”
Trump’s antagonism towards NATO also extends to the 27-member European Union (EU), which he said was created “to screw the US”.
The widespread speculation, in the current political climate, is whether the UK and France could provide nuclear protection to Western Europe—or will countries like Germany, Poland and the Nordics be forced to go nuclear?
The New York Times said last month that Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland, with its long history of Russian occupation, might eventually develop its own nuclear weapons.
Of the world’s approximately 12,331 nuclear warheads, roughly 9,604 are in the military stockpiles—for use by missiles, aircraft, ships and submarines. The remaining warheads have been retired but are still relatively intact and are awaiting dismantlement, according to FAS.
The world’s nine nuclear-armed states are the UK, the US, Russia, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel.
Both the UK and France have about 515 warheads compared to about 3,700 in the American arsenal, with an additional 1,300 waiting to be deactivated.
Tariq Rauf, former Head of Verification and Security Policy at the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told IPS, “For some time now, I have believed that NATO’s European members have failed to integrate Russia into a common European security architecture.”
It is a concerning reality that some of the new members of NATO, former East bloc countries, have endeavoured to get some form of revenge for the wrongs inflicted upon them by the USSR and have found ways to provoke Russia, which in turn has led to bad behaviour by Russia, he said.
“Now the proverbial chickens have come home to roost, and a shooting war has been going on for three years. The US pullback from Europe has long been on the books; President Trump is the latest US leader who seems to let the Europeans fend for themselves.”
Eighty years after the end of World War II, EU economies are thriving, but their foreign policy remains confused, and now there are concerns about “friendly proliferation”.
The Polish president, Rauf pointed out, has openly voiced interest in developing his own nuclear weapons if the US does not station nuclear weapons in his country. Interestingly, this did not elicit any concerns from the IAEA or other countries, as Poland is a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Both France and the UK still labour under delusions of being global powers and have pretensions of providing “extended deterrence” to their European friends as the US distances itself, said Rauf.
In the UK, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is cutting support to pensioners and other social programmes, as well as overseas development assistance, to fund new nuclear missile submarines and maintain an arsenal of about 260 operational nuclear weapons.
In France, President Macron is reversing President de Gaulle’s policy and is openly offering to bring in EU countries under a French nuclear “umbrella”, even as the economy declines and social problems increase.
While France has close to 300 operational nuclear warheads, it has permanently closed and dismantled its nuclear weapon test sites and facilities to make nuclear material for nuclear weapons.
Germany has reversed policy as well and will again host US medium-range nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, as will the UK, which will bring back US nuclear-armed bombers.
The 55-year-old NPT system is on the verge of collapse, and if that happens, the result will be a cascade of nuclear proliferation in Europe and the Asia-Pacific, warned Rauf.
Jackie Cabasso, Executive Director, Western States Legal Foundation, Oakland, California, told IPS talk of a potential “Eurobomb” goes back decades, but it has escalated sharply since the Trump administration’s antipathy towards its NATO allies has caused some of them to question the reliability of the US commitment to Article 5 of the 1949 NATO treaty.
Article 5, at the heart of the treaty, commits NATO states to help out any member that comes under armed attack, with the response they deem appropriate, including military responses, widely understood to include the US ‘nuclear umbrella’.
In 2020, French President Macron called for a ‘strategic dialogue’ on ‘the role of France’s nuclear deterrent in [Europe’s] collective security’. In an attempt to open discussions on this issue with Germany, France repeated the offer in 2022, but there were no takers.
Last month, Macron offered to open the strategic debate’ with interested European countries to determine ‘if there are new cooperations that may emerge. Officials from Germany, Poland, Denmark, Lithuania, and Latvia have welcomed Macron’s call for a strategic dialogue, which would also aim to include nuclear-armed UK.
“Donald Trump’s wildly erratic pronouncements and behaviour make it impossible to predict how the US will react. But clues might be found in Project 2025, widely seen as the playbook for the second Trump administration,” Cabasso said.
Project 2025 seeks to ‘transform NATO so that US allies are capable of fielding the great majority of the conventional forces required to deter Russia while relying on the United States primarily for our nuclear deterrent and select other capabilities while reducing the U.S. force posture in Europe’.
While Trump threatened to withdraw the US from NATO during his first term, the US government as a whole is deeply committed to NATO, as is illustrated by the fact that in 2024 Congress passed, and President Biden signed, a law—supported by then Senator/now Secretary of State Marco Rubio—requiring that a withdrawal from NATO be approved by Congress.
“I think it’s unlikely, though not impossible, that the Trump administration will pull the US out of NATO,” said Cabasso.
But, in light of Russia’s ongoing war of aggression in Ukraine with its attendant drumbeat of nuclear threats, and a US ally increasingly seen as unreliable, a number of former and current European government officials and politicians have called for some form of an independent European nuclear force.
Such a development would violate the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and other applicable laws. But more alarming is the growing normalisation of nuclear threats and legitimisation of nuclear proliferation suggested by its proponents.
At a time when all of the nuclear-armed states are qualitatively and, in some cases, quantitatively upgrading their nuclear arsenals, a new multipolar arms race is underway, and the dangers of wars among nuclear-armed states are growing. Adding more nuclear-armed actors to the world stage is a truly terrifying prospect.
Germany and other NATO members should rebuff any suggestion of acquiring nuclear weapons and take the lead in rejecting reliance on nuclear weapons, use every diplomatic means at their disposal to lower the temperature with Russia and bring the Ukraine war to an end, and promote negotiations among nuclear-armed states to begin the process of nuclear disarmament.
“Instead of engaging in a strategic dialogue about a potential Eurobomb, European leaders should be engaging in a dialogue to commence negotiations on a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Europe, ultimately to include Russia,” she said.
It’s very difficult to imagine in these dark times, but as Albert Einstein said, ‘Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions’.