Russian missiles threaten EU: Does Europe need its own nuclear deterrent?

In order to deter Russia from a nuclear attack, European states like Germany depend on the USA.

Russian missiles threaten EU: Does Europe need its own nuclear deterrent?

In order to deter Russia from a nuclear attack, European states like Germany depend on the USA. The US President has command of NATO's nuclear weapons. Should Berlin accept the offer from Paris to set up its own nuclear protective shield in the EU?

The municipality of Büchel lies between the tree-crowned mountains of the Eifel and the picturesque landscape of the Moselle valley. From here you can explore the wine region on hikes. However, the village is not necessarily known as a holiday home. Büchel is the only location in Germany where NATO stores atomic bombs. Probably hardly anyone wants to imagine exactly what has to happen before they are ignited. But US President Joe Biden dealt with exactly that question during his 2020 election campaign.

Within NATO, the United States has the role of protecting nuclear power for states like Germany that do not have their own nuclear arsenal. The decision as to when a nuclear weapon from Büchel will be detonated lies in the hands of the incumbent US President. Germany only has a right of veto here. If he were elected to office, he wanted to change NATO's strategy, Biden said at the time: The USA would only react with a nuclear counterattack in the event of a nuclear attack on its allies, but not, as previously guaranteed, after a serious attack with conventional ones Weapons.

Biden did not implement the idea after his election. Since Russian President Vladimir Putin openly threatened nuclear strikes at the beginning of the Ukraine war, Biden and his Western partners must continue to show their strength with a possible deterrent scenario. But Biden's pre-election announcement highlights just how much European countries must rely on the US to effectively deter Russia from nuclear deployment.

This dependence on the Pentagon is causing concern in Germany, especially for the CDU, also with a view to a possible re-election of Donald Trump's declared opponent of NATO in two years. Thorsten Frei, managing director of the Union faction in the Bundestag, demanded in a guest article for the FAZ at the end of May that Europe must be ready to "think the unthinkable". It should "find an answer to the question of how, if necessary, it can assert itself without the great ally in the West". Frei sees the only way to get there in the "Europeanisation of the French nuclear force".

CDU leader Friedrich Merz is also of the opinion that a European "nuclear capacity is our life insurance". The two Union politicians refer to an offer by Emmanuel Macron that he had made to the other EU members years ago: the states should conduct a strategic dialogue on the role of France's nuclear deterrent for common security. The French President reiterated his offer in early 2022, before the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But the government's response is still pending.

Eckhard Lübkemeier, who researches the crises in the EU for the Science and Politics Foundation, also demands that Berlin should finally seek talks with Paris. The Europeans could count themselves lucky to benefit from the security guarantees of the USA, he tells ntv.de. However, they should not lose sight of the fact that this is a deterrent that is not rooted in the EU itself.

"The central question in nuclear deterrence, which does not serve the self-protection of those who have nuclear weapons, is: How credible is the promise of protection, both for one's own allies and for the possible adversary, i.e. for the person who is to be deterred?" , emphasizes Lübkemeier. After all, you have to put yourself in the shoes of the US President. If the previously unimaginable does occur, his first task is to defend his own population against the nuclear threat. "That then leads to the question of whether, in extreme cases, the Americans would actually be willing to risk their own existence in order to protect the Europeans."

Lübkemeier worked in the European Department of the Federal Chancellery before becoming German Ambassador to Ireland and the United Arab Emirates. For his doctorate, shortly before the end of the Cold War, he dealt with the dilemmas of so-called extended deterrence, i.e. the US promise of nuclear protection for Germany and the other NATO allies. "Unfortunately, many of the questions I was dealing with at the time are now coming up again," he says. In a study published in 2020, Lübkemeier explains the problems of this extended deterrent.

The United States has been demanding more defense independence from the Europeans, and not just since Trump's election. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, their foreign policy focus has gradually shifted from European security to their own defense against China, which claims to play a leading role on the world stage. The US presidents have also come under pressure from internal political forces, says Lübkemeier: "In the future, it will be more difficult to convey to the Americans that rich Europe cannot ensure its own security." For this reason, too, the United States is encouraging its allies to provide two percent of their gross land product for NATO.

"The times when we could rely on others are long gone," said then-Chancellor Angela Merkel back in May 2017. "We Europeans really have to take our fate into our own hands." If he takes this sentence seriously, he will inevitably come to the conclusion that the EU must develop its own security policy, says Lübkemeier. Ultimately, the political sovereignty of a state is also based on the ability to defend itself.

With the positioning of its weapons, the Kremlin directly threatens European territory. "The missiles that Russia has stationed in Kaliningrad could be equipped with nuclear weapons and reach Berlin," says Lübkemeier. Fear is already rampant among Germans that the Ukraine war will spread to Europe, according to a survey conducted by the opinion research institute Forsa at the end of June this year. Accordingly, more than half of the population fears that the conflict could lead to a third world war.

According to NATO, Russia has invested a lot of money in expanding its nuclear arsenal in recent decades, while NATO itself only began modernizing a few years ago. The Kremlin is concentrating on the development of new missile systems, says Jessica Cox, director of nuclear policy at NATO. The Russian hypersonic missiles are particularly dangerous because they "fly at extremely high speeds, at relatively low altitudes and are maneuverable during flight". These qualities made it almost impossible to defend against them. Cox demands that NATO must therefore "review its own capabilities in the light of the new Russian systems". From their point of view, such developments prove that nuclear deterrence is of existential importance for NATO partners, although the defense alliance has taken up the cause of promoting nuclear disarmament worldwide.

NATO keeps the exact number of nuclear weapons stationed in Europe secret. However, experts assume that there are 100 atomic bombs, about 20 of which are stored in Büchel. Other warheads are located at Kleine-Brogel in Belgium, Aviano and Ghedi in Italy, Volkel in the Netherlands and Incirlik in Turkey. However, NATO's nuclear weapons positioned in Europe represent only a small part of the total arsenal of the nuclear powers. According to the Association of American Scientists (FAS), Russia has nearly 6,000 nuclear warheads, the US has more than 5,400, Britain 225 and France 290.

Lübkemeier believes it is possible that France could make a credible promise of nuclear protection for Europe. But only if the EU were to develop into a political union with its own defense arm, which Germany and France in particular would have to take care of. Not as an alternative to NATO, but within the framework of NATO, which would then rest on a European and an American pillar. After Brexit, the United Kingdom would also be on board as a NATO member.

Ultimately, full European sovereignty is only possible if Europe, like the USA, can defend itself. However, European self-defence is only conceivable as the culmination of a long-term process in which the EU states continue to grow together. In the transition to a European defense union with nuclear backing from France, care must be taken that neither the US nor its European allies perceive this as a decoupling from Washington. Otherwise, the United States' promise of protection could erode before there is a European replacement. Berlin and Paris must also ensure that other EU members are involved at an early stage. "The closer integration of the states into the EU is the only way to a European defense union with France as its nuclear backbone," says Lübkemeier.

The same applies to defense policy as to economic cooperation: the EU should come together so as not to be crushed between great powers like China and the USA. Many of Trump's statements during his term in office must have been painfully remembered by Europeans. He had described the EU as an "opponent" of the USA, and NATO even as "obsolete". The fact that Trump could withdraw the atomic bombs from Büchel after re-election seems even more threatening today, after the Russian attack on Ukraine, than it did five years ago.