The nuclear arsenal that Europe fears and wants

Polish Prime Minister suggests that Europe needs to rethink its nuclear defense in the face of change in US foreign policy

“We would be safer if we had our own nuclear arsenal,” Donald Tusk, Prime Minister of Poland, told the parliament of his country on March 7. The reason he gave was the “deep change of American geopolitics,” an euphemism to Donald Trump’s diplomatic fire, which also required Poland to expand its conventional armed forces.

Tusk was not proposing a Polish nuclear bomb – at least not immediately: “The way for this would be too long and there would be a need for consensus.” Instead, he was responding to a name of Friedrich Merz, the future chancellor of Germany, to conversations with Britain and France about “complement the American nuclear shield.” On March 5, Emmanuel Macron, president of France, announced a “strategic debate on the use of our dissuasion to protect our allies on the European continent.”

This debate will need to face two problems: credibility and ability. For almost 80 years, the United States have maintained a nuclear umbrella over Europe. However, the expanded dissuasion is strange and unnatural. A country should promise to use its nuclear forces – and thus risk nuclear annihilation – in the name of another. The difficulty of making this promise believable was what led the US to build a huge arsenal and spread it around the world. The nuclear forces of Britain, although modest, are also “attributed” to NATO defense. Although only the prime minister can authorize his use, the implicit promise is that they would be used to defend allies such as Finland, Romania or Türkiye.

France has a more complicated relationship with expanded deterrent. She sought an independent nuclear deterrent in the 1950s precisely because she believed, to a greater degree than Britain, that the US umbrella was not reliable. France has not adhered and has not yet participated in the Nuclear Planning Group (NPG), an NATO Forum in which 31 allies discuss nuclear policy. “The idea is to really keep open options for the president,” explains Emmanuelle Maitre of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. “There is a kind of reluctance to compromise… with anything that can limit [sua] freedom of action. ”

However, French leaders also said that their vital interests have a “European dimension.” In 1995, Britain and France agreed that “the vital interests of one could not be threatened without the other’s vital interests to be at risk”-an implicit expansion of the horizon of French deterrent. The same language was used in the Treaty of Aachen Franco-German 24 years later. Even Jordan Bardella, leader of the far-right party party, recently acknowledged that the French nuclear weapons “protect, by definition, certain neighbors and certain European partners.”

The question is what this means in practice. In 2022, Macron said that “evidently” would not respond in the same coin if Russia used nuclear weapons in Ukraine. France’s vital interests were “clearly defined,” he confusing it and “these would not be at stake if there was a nuclear ballistic attack in Ukraine” – or, he recklessly added “in the region.” This phrase seemed to exclude allies from EU and NATO in the Eastern European protection. Since then, Macron has adopted a more bellicose stance, successfully reconstructing ties with Eastern European states. But even the closest allies in France have particular doubts about whether future presidents will be willing to risk a nuclear war to support them.

European allies are now asking how far Macron may be willing to go. “I would like to know, first of all, in detail what this means in terms of power in the use of these weapons,” Tusk told reporters, seeming to suggest a model in which Poland would have some launch authority. “If we decide on this, it would be worth ensuring that we are in our hands and we make the final decisions.”

Is the bomb?

This brings echoes from the multilateral force proposal, a concept of the 1950s to a Pan-European Nuclear Force of Property and Joint Operation. The idea was that 25 ships would carry eight polaris missiles each, with the crew of each composed of personnel from at least three NATO countries. Later, in the 1960s, Britain proposed an Atlantic nuclear force that would place the British and American nuclear forces under international command, with national vetoes.

These plans have largely failed and it is unlikely to find support today. Macron seems to have discarded any movement towards the joint launch authority. The French nuclear deterrent is “sovereign and French from beginning to end,” he insisted. The decision to use nuclear weapons “has always been, and always will be, by the president and commander-in-chief of France.” There are also legal obstacles. If Britain or France transfered custody and control of their own nuclear weapons, or if non-nuclear states built new ones, they would have to leave the non-nuclear proliferation treaty-or violate it.

There are other options, however. Peter Watkins, a former British defense officer who has supervised nuclear policy, proposes that France could join the NPG NPG as an observer rather than a participant. A stronger option would be France to publicly clarify the European dimension of its interests. Bruno Tertrais, a French nuclear expert, suggested that France could simply make it clear that Article 42.7 of the Lisbon Treaty, the EU’s mutual defense clause, “could be exercised by any means, including nuclear weapons.”

Another course would be to borrow from the United States approach to expanded dissuasion. The United States has long maintained about 180 B61 tactical nuclear pumps in Europe. They remain under American control. But the air forces of Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and Türkiye practice transport them and deliver them using double capacity aircraft. Other air forces contribute conventionally armed aircraft to support these missions, performing tasks such as blocking enemy radars and replenishing.

For Britain it would be difficult to imitate these nuclear sharing arrangements. Since the 1990s, all its nuclear artifacts have been in submarines whose location remains secret. Submarines can be used for signaling – in early 2022, shortly after Ukraine’s invasion of Russia, France took the unusual measure of placing three of its four nuclearly armed submarines in the sea – but you can’t navigate one of them by the Rhine or vistula to reassure allies.

Airplanes are another question. France has nuclear weapons launched by airplanes to send a “final warning” to the enemy, before firing missiles launched by submarines against, presumably, Russian cities. In poker exercise, the French Air Force practices long -range nuclear bombing attacks four times a year. In 2020, after the shock of Trump’s first term, Macron invited allies to “associate” themselves with the French nuclear exercises. VoilàIn 2022 an Italian tank replenished French planes in one of these exercises. In recent days, other allies have offered to participate, says a person familiar with these negotiations.

The question is how far this can advance. French aircraft with increasingly nuclear capacity participates in conventional exercises abroad, including Lithuania and Germany last year. In 2018, Tertrais suggested that France could eventually rotate Rafale aircraft aircraft with unarmed nuclear capacity for Eastern European air bases “to demonstrate their solidarity.” This would not just be a political sign. It would also extend the range in which France could attack Russia and safely return its planes. In more extreme scenarios, writes Tertrais, France could base dozens of missiles launched by planes in Germany, allow them to be transported by allied jets or even call “a European nuclear maritime task force.”

The problem of all this is the scale. The American arsenal is large enough, watkins notes, “which it is plausible that he could employ some weapons in response to [um] Attack on an ally while still had many reserve… to stop an attack on the American homeland. ” In the case of Britain, he adds, using a single missile at lower levels of climbing-say, in response to the use of a tactical nuclear weapon by Russia-“could compromise the location of the only implanted submarine.” From the DreadNough class, the first of which is expected in the early 2030s, could put two boats at sea at the same time.

Assuming, of course, that I could build more. The very threat that requires these plans – Trump’s hostile attitude towards allies – can also complicate the answer. Britain depends closely on the US for the design, manufacture and maintenance of nuclear weapons. Trident missiles that carry them are rented and kept in the US. Your British warheads should fit within an American “aeroshell”. And the tubes that contain missiles in the DreadNought class are the same as the US Columbia class submarines.

A new Cordiale Entente

In the worst case (which few employees find probable), if the US cut off support, Britain could cling to the missiles in their possession, probably for a few years. But their future and submarine plans would not be more viable. One option for Britain would be to relive the idea of ​​cooperation with France. In the 1970s, France proposed to sell submarines launched by Britain and, in the 1980s, suggested a cruise missile with nuclear capacity.

It would be a dramatic step. Macron’s “strategic debate” is at an early stage. For now, he says Heloïse Fayet of the Think Tank IFRI in Paris, “there are no conversations about placing French nuclear weapons outside the French territory,” the more dilute the French authority to use them. “The idea is more to advance on the political side,” says Fayet, “trying to find, at a very high level, vital interests shared between, for example, France and Sweden, or France and Germany,” as well as expanding involvement in French nuclear exercises. “There are many ideas, but we are lacking in French political orientation.” This can disappoint Tusk admirers, who see a crisis approaching. Even so, Trump has triggered the deepest nuclear debate in Europe since the 1950s.

Via The Economist*