Europe needs a better nuclear deterrent now

Russian President Vladimir Putin has catapulted a European debate long relegated to footnotes right into the headlines. Does “Europe” need its own nuclear arsenal to deter a potential Russian strike, now or in future?
During most of the Cold War and the years since, that question seemed settled. The European Nato members are meant to shelter under America’s nuclear “umbrella.” As part of the transatlantic alliance’s “nuclear sharing,” five partner countries — Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Turkey — host an estimated 100 American nukes on their soil. To retaliate against a Russian strike, the allies would be able to drop these US bombs from their own planes.
Aside from those American weapons, France and the UK also have their own arsenals. But France has always kept its nukes outside the joint strategising of the Western alliance — it’s the only nation among Nato’s 30 member states not to participate in the alliance’s Nuclear Planning Group. Even before Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine this year, some Europeans worried that the American umbrella was becoming less reliable, and thus by definition less of a deterrent. The US has shifted its geopolitical focus from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and specifically toward containing China, which is now adding to its arsenal fast.
Washington therefore has to hold up two nuclear umbrellas and plan for two simultaneous wars. Scholars such as Maximilian Terhalle in Germany and Francois Heisbourg in France have been warning that Washington, forced to choose, would probably give priority to its commitments in Asia, and to allies such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
Worse, former US President Donald Trump spooked Europeans when he questioned Nato’s mutual-defense clause and even contemplated taking the US out of the alliance. Trump is gone for now. But he, or a president like him, could return. In the long run, the US appears less dependable as a protector than it used to be. Topping all that, Putin has now gone rhetorically ballistic by dropping not-so-veiled threats that he might use nukes against Ukraine or Western countries that interfere in his war. The consensus for now is that he’s bluffing. But from the Baltic to Poland and beyond, Europeans would love to know what the back-up plan is.
In one scenario, France could extend its nuclear umbrella to the whole EU (of which the UK is no longer a member). French President Emmanuel Macron speaks often about achieving European “autonomy,” by which he usually means independence from the US. So he should in theory be amenable. In practice, the French are neither willing nor able. Since Charles de Gaulle, France has always insisted on total sovereignty over its arsenal and all decisions pertaining to it. In that sense, visions of a Europeanised “force de frappe,” as the French call their nukes, suffer from the same problem as ideas about a “European Army.”

—Bloomberg