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    Europe Rethinks Nuclear Weapons After US Delivers Reality Check
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    Europe Rethinks Nuclear Weapons After US Delivers Reality Check

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    27 Comments

    1. Zhukov-74 on

      >Europe has been fighting to keep an increasingly hostile US in NATO while countries race to rearm. And now for the first time since the end of the Cold War, European capitals are discussing how to develop their own nuclear deterrent, according to people familiar with the matter, citing conversations between militaries and governments.

      >At the moment, only the UK and France have atomic weapons. French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to offer nuclear deterrence to the rest of Europe in a speech this month, according to people familiar with the matter. He already evoked the possibility of extending the French umbrella over the rest of Europe last year following the events in Ukraine.

      >Nuclear deterrence is set to be a hot topic at the Munich Security Conference, which starts on Friday. Macron’s nuclear speech will come later, in France, after consultations with the president’s advisers, according to people familiar with the timing.

    2. Telochim on

      Took them long to internalize the Ukrainian lesson.

      You either have WMDs or you’re on the menu.

    3. Littlepage3130 on

      I am eager to see what sort of plan France and the UK come up with. The Northwood declaration seemed like strategic ambiguity to me, so I’m curious to see if they do something more concrete like stationing their nukes all over Europe.

    7. TokyoBaguette on

      Why do we do this… Nukes in Europe? Who would launch this ? We’re back to MAD doctrine now?

    9. _CZakalwe_ on

      Canada knows a lot about nukes and jet engines. And are bothered by Trump. We need to cooperate with them more.

    10. QwertzOne on

      “Europe rethinks”, “Europe builds power”, “Europe sends strongly worded letters”, “Europe gives excellent speeches”, “Europe crushes Eurovision”.

      We are world-class at the rhetoric, but words are cheap. The data shows the combined UK/France arsenal is barely 25% of what Russia has deployed. If we are serious about a Plan B because Washington isn’t reliable, then we need to move past symbolism.

      Moving three French Rafales to Poland is a nice signal, but it’s not a shield, will there be serious, permanent deployment to Poland or Romania? Are we actually going to fund a non-US supply chain for the UK missiles, so they don’t have to go to US for maintenance? Or are we just waiting for the next reality check to hit before we write another letter?

    11. Gwinty- on

      I think the numbers game is a bit bs.
      If you look at China they are said to have about 600 warheads ready. This is all they deem necessary to defend a country if that size.
      So the EU does not have to inflate their arsenal to US size. They just need enough for defense.

    12. Significant_Swing_76 on

      Well, building nuclear weapons without the possibility to test them makes the project almost impossible.

      So if neither France or UK will share its technology (which would be understandable), then it’s a steep climb.

      The Swedes are said to have been very close to have a usable device, but who knows.

    13. AnyImpress2234 on

      By ‘Europe’ you mean Kallas and Von Der Leyen. With nukes and unregulated by any democratic controls.

    14. Hottage on

      The best thing about nukes is that whether you have 16,000 or 16 of them, the threat is the same.

      The worst thing about nukes is that whether you have 16,000 or 16 of them, the threat is the same.

      The US is basically an adversary right now, and will take decades to earn their trust back after the current administration is replaced.

      Until their hyper-polarized sports-team ass politics become more stable there is just no way to believe any agreement made by one administration won’t simply be ripped up by the next.

    18. matidiaolo on

      So after all those years of exposure to nuclear weapons, all those years of “maturity”, humanity concluded that what we need is MORE nuclear weapons?

      I wish I could slap those country leaders into reality because they think we are playing command and conquer game or something…

    20. jcrestor on

      Good article.

      We as Europeans are facing a multi-layered problem. We can not fully trust the US anymore to intervene on our behalf. But we also can not fully trust the UK and France, as they are facing the same domestic challenges of extremely isolationist and nationalist movements. And the same is true in most European countries, so we couldn’t even trust some other big country like Germany or Italy to protect others with their hypothetical nuclear capabilities.

      At the end this means that each country can only be truly safe if it has their own nuclear deterrent, which in the case of small countries like the Baltics seems utterly impossible.

      So what is the solution to this cluster of problems?

      One solutions obviously would be a Russian collapse. So one route could be to enable Ukraine to take down the Russians – a long shot for all intents and purposes, and Europeans have shown time and again that they fear a Russian collapse more than a Ukrainian defeat.

      Another solution is a federalization of the EU, which would have to include a deep military integration with a nuclear arsenal that is under the control of a federal EU government. This solution seems even more far fetched.

      Am I overlooking something?

    21. atzucach on

      Quick question, why is r/europe full of US media? And especially at a time when US media is becoming increasingly compromised by and beholden to the dictatorship-in-waiting in that country?

    23. Adventurous_Touch342 on

      We need Poland to have as many nukes as it takes to reset the world to factory settings…

    24. -hi-nrg- on

      That is cute, but Europe already has nuclear weapons and no one is realistically threatening it (except for Greenland).

      If Europe wants to pursue this avenue, how it will react if other countries that are being actively threatened try to pursue nuclear weapons (Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Brazil, Colombia).

      Would it sanction those countries? It’s the nuclear deterrence a right for me, but not for you? If so, how different is Europe from the US, really?

    26. nariofthewind on

      Let’s be honest, we’re really talking about Europe’s eastern flank here. So who’s actually going to build a nuclear deterrent? To me, it looks like only Poland and Romania could realistically pull it off. It might be tougher for Poland since it doesn’t have nuclear facilities, but its economy is strong enough to handle a project like that. However, for both enrichment is new(Romania operate CANDU reactors that uses natural uranium but has its own supply and circuits).