Rethinking the European nuclear posture

Lingering uncertainty regarding US support for NATO and burden-sharing among allies has raised questions as to the future of the NATO nuclear-sharing arrangement. While US President Donald J. Trump’s reaffirmation of the US commitment to Article 5, NATO’s mutual defense clause, may have temporarily placated allies, intense feelings of insecurity among the European allies remain. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, taking an unusually strong stance, gave voice to these sentiments: “The time in which [Europe] can rely fully on others—they are somewhat over.” With these remarks, Merkel offered her answer to a question that has been asked repeatedly since Trump was elected president of the United States: Can Europe count on its ally across the Atlantic to come to its defense when needed?

Of those who say “no,” some go so far as to call for a review of the European nuclear posture, which is rooted in the NATO nuclear-sharing arrangement and links European security to the US arsenal. Fearful that Trump might close the nuclear umbrella covering Europe, a small group of academics and politicians has revived the debate surrounding a European nuclear deterrent— otherwise referred to as “Eurodeterrent.” Shortly after the 2016 US presidential elections, Roderich Kiesewetter, a member of the German Bundestag, proposed that the United Kingdom and France place their nuclear weapons under joint European Union (EU) command, thereby renouncing sole control over them. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, a former prime minister of Poland and current chair of the Law and Justice Party, went one step further. In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a conservative German newspaper, he contended that the EU should become a nuclear superpower. Others, such as Thorsten Benner, head of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin, argue that Germany should acquire nuclear capabilities of its own.