It\u2019s a new day in Europe. <\/p>\n
Gone are the halcyon years of unshakeable American commitment to Europe\u2019s defense against Russia. <\/p>\n
Here to stay \u2013 at least while Donald Trump is in the White House is something more transactional. And the stakes couldn\u2019t be higher. <\/p>\n
Europe must \u201cstep up in a big way to provide for its own defense,\u201d US Vice President JD Vance told decision-makers in Munich in February. <\/p>\n
Europe\u2019s answer so far has been to pledge to boost spending at home and for Ukraine, with an eye to buying European-made armaments. But a more radical solution has also been floated: a European \u201cnuclear umbrella.\u201d <\/p>\n
If the United States has always been Europe\u2019s big brother, France and the United Kingdom are longstanding nuclear powers too \u2014 and some European leaders are wondering whether the ultimate deterrence to Moscow could come from closer to home. <\/p>\n
While the bulk of the world\u2019s nuclear weapons are US or Russian-owned, France has some 290 nuclear warheads, the UK 225 of the US-designed Trident missiles. <\/p>\n
Recent weeks saw a flurry of comments from European leaders looking to bolster their common defense under a British or French nuclear umbrella, as Washington\u2019s reliability appears to waver. <\/p>\n
French President Emmanuel Macron earlier this month promised to \u201copen the strategic debate on the protection by our deterrence of our allies on the European continent.\u201d <\/p>\n
His comments came after Germany\u2019s presumed next Chancellor Friedrich Merz called for talks with France and the UK on extending their nuclear protection. <\/p>\n
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that the French proposal was \u201cnot new\u201d and had come up several times in conversations, throwing his support behind the idea. <\/p>\n
Other leaders from countries historically averse to nuclear weapons, like Sweden and Denmark, also welcomed France\u2019s overtures towards European allies. <\/p>\n
Since General Charles de Gaulle established France\u2019s nuclear force in the late 1950s, in part to keep Paris at the heart of global decision-making, France\u2019s program has been proudly sovereign \u2014 \u201cFrench from end to end,\u201d as Macron described it. <\/p>\n
The UK hasn\u2019t made any public offer to further share or alter its nuclear protection. But its warheads remain pledged to the US-dominated NATO command, thus already offering a strategic protection to European allies. <\/p>\n
Some leaders are still hoping for reinforced US support though. <\/p>\n
On Thursday, Polish President Andrzej Duda called on Trump to deploy US nuclear weapons in Poland, likening the move to Russia\u2019s decision to base some of its own nuclear missiles in Belarus in 2023. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s not only that the time has come, but that it would be safer if those weapons were already here,\u201d Duda told the Financial Times. <\/p>\n
Aside from its huge power, the American arsenal\u2019s size and diversity gives it another key advantage in nuclear war: the potential to minimize any thermonuclear exchange. The US, \u201ccan use what we call a graduated response,\u201d Pinc\u00e9 said, to perhaps even deliver a single strike, instead of unleashing its entire arsenal. <\/p>\n
In contrast, the French nuclear armory \u2013 with missile-laden submarines and nuclear-armed bombers \u2013 was historically intended as a last resort if Cold-War Russian forces threatened the French homeland, likely unleashing a barrage on key sites in territories of the Soviet sphere to force an enemy withdrawal. <\/p>\n
It is differences such as these that pose a key challenge to any European-centered nuclear umbrella. <\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing that the Europeans don\u2019t have is nuclear culture. They don\u2019t understand it because they\u2019ve always presumed that the Americans would do it,\u201d Yakovleff said. \u201cI suspect that Macron is thinking of, if I dare say, educating whoever wants it, on nuclear dialogue.\u201d <\/p>\n
Macron has proposed having allies participate in the country\u2019s secretive nuclear exercises, to see firsthand France\u2019s capabilities and decision-making. <\/p>\n
But he\u2019s also been clear that he\u2019s not yielding his \u201cnuclear button\u201d to allies or even to Brussels. The decision to launch a nuclear strike \u201chas always remained and will remain\u201d in his hands, he told France in a national address. <\/p>\n
The UK military has been \u201cvery active in terms of increasing what it\u2019s called the nuclear deterrence IQ at NATO,\u201d said Lukasz Kulesa, director of UK-based think tank RUSI\u2019s proliferation and nuclear policy program, thereby \u201cmaking sure that all the allies are aware and understand the grammar of nuclear deterrence.\u201d <\/p>\n
Crucially though, the US hasn\u2019t said it\u2019s pulling out of its commitment to protect NATO allies, she stressed. <\/p>\n
This week, a nuclear-capable US bomber flew over central Stockholm to mark the one-year anniversary of Sweden\u2019s accession to NATO \u2013 a highly symbolic choice. <\/p>\n
Such a move might signal how seriously Washington views the rising temperatures in Europe. <\/p>\n
Megaton for megaton, Europe\u2019s arsenal bears no comparison with that of Moscow. <\/p>\n
Boosting Europe\u2019s nuclear arsenal would be a \u201cquestion of years, if not decades,\u201d of investment and development, according to RUSI\u2019s Kulesa. <\/p>\n
But deterrence isn\u2019t just a question of the number of missiles; demonstrating the operational credibility of Europe\u2019s nuclear forces is also essential. <\/p>\n
More cohesive cooperation with allies around nuclear forces would be a strong boost to deterrence, Kulesa said. That could entail air-to-air refuelling from allies in support of French bombers or anti-submarine warfare capabilities to protect British or French nuclear sub maneuvers. <\/p>\n
Given decades of shrinking investment in the British military, questions have been raised over the deterrence that Britain\u2019s conventional and nuclear weapons offer, particularly given its reliance on a US supply chain. <\/p>\n
In the last eight years, the UK has publicly acknowledged two failed nuclear missile tests, one of them in the waters off Florida, when dummy missiles didn\u2019t fire as intended. <\/p>\n
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer last month promised what the government described as \u201cthe biggest investment in defense spending since the Cold War\u201d in an increasingly dangerous world. <\/p>\n
Other non-nuclear European allies are boosting their spending on conventional weapons \u2013 and this also counts, analysts say. <\/p>\n
Fundamentally, \u201cnuclear weapons are not a magic instrument,\u201d said Kulesa. <\/p>\n
Any true deterrence to Russia will need conventional and nuclear forces, he said, and under Trump, \u201cthe question is whether you can count on the American commitment and involvement.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s a new day in Europe. Gone are the halcyon years of unshakeable American commitment…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14705,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}