The next German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, started the European pigeons in the circulation when he suggested last month who, given the growing distrust in the commitment of President Trump towards NATO, wanted to speak with France and Great Britain to extend nuclear deterrence on Germany.
By warning that a “profound change of American geopolitics” had put Poland, as well as Ukraine, in an “objectively more difficult situation”, Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland suggested the same, while Poland, with its long history of Russian occupation, could eventually develop its bomb.
So the president of Poland, Andrzej Duda, said this week that the time had come to the United States to consider the redistribution of some of his nuclear weapons from Western Europe to Poland. “I think it’s not just the time, but it would be safer if those weapons were already here,” Duda said at the Financial Times.
The turmoil was immediate, given the sensitivity and complications of the nuclear question and the entire concept of extensive deterrence-the will of a nuclear armed country to use its nuclear weapons in defense of a non-nuclear ally. This commitment is at the center of article five of NATO, promising collective defense and depends on the enormous American nuclear arsenal.
Trump and his officials claim to remain committed to extending the American nuclear umbrella on Europe, the vital deterrent for any serious Russian aggression and for the alliance itself. But its evident hostility towards Europe thus has innervated the European predicts of America which caused strong doubts that may depend on the United States.
There are fears that talking too much about a European replacement, let alone try to build one, would only encourage Mr. Trump to withdraw his commitment. Even so, European allies are now engaged in the most serious debate of generations on what European nuclear defense should be.
Like many things when it comes to European defense, replacing American commitment would not be easy.
Today France and Great Britain are the only two western powers in Europe that have nuclear weapons. For others, like Germany, joining the Nuclear Club would be expensive, requesting the treaty of nuclear non -proliferation and might seem more threatening in Moscow, increasing the risks rather than lowering them.
But together, the French and the British have only about 500 tested compared to about 3,700 in the American Arsenal, with another 1,300 waiting to be deactivated. The Americans also have the one that is known as the “triad”-nuclear measures on terrestrial missiles, bombers and submarines.
The French do not have terrestrial missiles but have nuclear -equipped bombers and submarines, while the British have only submarines.
And only the French nuclear arsenal is truly independent of the United States, technically and politically. France has always refused to join the NATO nuclear planning group, maintaining the exclusive authority on the use of its weapons in the hands of the French president, currently Emmanuel Macron.
The British deterrent depends on the American missiles Trident II, the mechanisms and the launch maintenance, raising at least the question if the British government has full authority to launch these weapons.
French doctrine has always been kept a little vague, part of the uncertainty that is the heart of deterrence. “We have a good idea of what the French will not do, but not a clear understanding of what they are willing to do,” said Claudia Major, head of transatlantic safety studies for the German Marshall.
Since 2020, Macron has sometimes spoken of the vital national interests of France as “a European dimension”, without specifying what it is. At the beginning of this month, he announced a “strategic debate on the use of our deterrence to protect our allies on the European continent”.
“But how far does that” European dimension “arrive?” Mrs. Major asked. “The French will not define it and obviously they don’t want to know Russia.”
The safety of nearby Germany and perhaps Poland would probably qualify as national vital national interests, said Erik Jones, director of the Robert Schuman Center at the European University Institute.
But it is far from clear that a rapid conventional Russian attack against Estonia or Lithuania would require a French threat or nuclear response. “The vital interests of France do not reach so far,” he said.
The French nuclear cleaner has no purpose of providing a cheap American -style extended deterrence, said Camille Grand, a former French and born defense official. But it provides another degree of uncertainty for Moscow that completes and even strengthens NATO nuclear policy, he said.
Since both France and Great Britain are European, their national interests are more likely to extend in the European neighborhood than the distant United States, Grand supported.
Then there is the question of the next French president. If Marine Le Pen was, the head of the far -right national event, it could have a closer vision of French interests. This could undermine the credibility of an extensive French nuclear cleaner in the same way that Europeans have become anxious for the commitment of Mr. Trump.
However, with the bombers and submarines, France maintains a “escalation scale”, with the ability to threaten use without doing it. For example, in February 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, France put a third nuclear submarine at sea, “a quiet but explicit message that the Russians saw,” said Grand.
As Mr. Merz and Polish leaders suggested, France could also consider “nuclear sharing”, as Americans do. There are five European countries – Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Türkiye – which currently host American nuclear bombs B61 and have their planes to deliver them.
Poland would like to be a sixth. While the French nuclear bombers have been supplied with fuel from Italy, for example, for France, deciding to position some of its nuclear weapons and bombers in other countries would be a break with its current doctrine. In any case, France and its president would maintain total control over their use.
The submarines alone do not provide a scale of escalation, because they should remain hidden, and the missiles of fire or do not. This is one of the reasons why British officials are taking into consideration the restoration of their deterrent air leg. Ideally, the British would also benefit from another nuclear level submarine, so more than one can be at sea. But the expense is enormous.
And there is no way to share a submarine with another country, the way in which a bomb or a missile launched by the air can be shared.
In the end, the nucleus of NATO nuclear cleaner remains the United States, said Ivo Daalder, a former Ambassador of the United States to NATO.
The question for him is less the number of newspapers that the credibility of the deterrence. “How to make a deterrent against Russia credible when you are an ocean and convince the allies that you are willing to make maximum sacrifice for them?” he asked. “Unfortunately, Trump answers these questions without even lifting them.”
Given all the uncertainty, Germany may have to become nuclear itself, said Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute. “So far talking about a German bomb has been limited to the types of fringe, but now it becomes more mainstream,” he said. But he prefers to discuss nuclear sharing with France, with French bombers on German bases.
Matthew Kroenig, a former officer of the Department of Defense who directs the Scowcroft Center for the strategy and safety at the Atlantic Council, thinks that the debate was useful to ensure that Europeans take the defense more seriously.
“NATO allies should do much more than the walnuts and bolts of the conventional defense, but some high-end things such as nuclear -olo deterrence the United States can provide,” he said.
Mrs. Major has another concern, widely shared. “The more we do for the defense, the better for us,” he said. “But does he send the wrong signal and has the undesirable consequence of America? It is the argument of disqualification that we fear so much. “