Credit: Federation of American Scientists (FAS)
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 28 2025 – The Trump administration’s hostile attitude towards Western Europe—and the threat to pullout of the 32-member military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) – signifies the danger of losing the longstanding protection of the US nuclear umbrella over Europe.
Jana Puglierin, director of the German office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, was quoted as saying: “Trump may, or may not, want to leave NATO officially, but he has every means to undermine NATO”.
Trump’s antagonism towards NATO also extends to the 27-member European Union (EU), which he said, was created, “to screw the US.”
The widespread speculation, in the current political climate, is whether the UK and France could provide nuclear protection to Western Europe—or will countries like Germany, Poland and the Nordics be forced to go nuclear?
The New York Times said last month that Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland , with its long history of Russian occupation, might eventually develop its own nuclear weapon.
Of the world’s approximately 12,331 nuclear warheads, roughly 9,604 are in the military stockpiles for use by missiles, aircraft, ships and submarines. The remaining warheads have been retired but are still relatively intact and are awaiting dismantlement, according to FAS.
The world’s nine nuclear-armed states are the UK, US, Russia, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel.
Both UK and France have only 515 warheads compared to about 3,700 in the American arsenal, with an additional 1,300 waiting to be de-activated.
Tariq Rauf (former Head of Verification and Security Policy, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told IPS “for some time now, I have believed that NATO’s European members have failed to integrate Russia into a common European security architecture”.
It is a concerning reality that some of the new members of NATO, former East bloc countries, have endeavoured to get some form of revenge for the wrongs inflicted upon them by the USSR, and have found ways to provoke Russia which in turn has led to bad behaviour by Russia.
“Now the proverbial chickens have come home to roost and a shooting war has been going on for three years. US pull back from Europe has long been on the books, President Trump is the latest US leader who seems to let the Europeans fend for themselves. Eighty years after the end of WW2, EU economies are thriving but their foreign policy remains confused and now there are concerns about “friendly proliferation”.
The Polish president, Rauf pointed out, has openly voiced interest in developing own nuclear weapons if the US does not station nuclear weapons in his country. Interestingly, this did not elicit any concerns from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or other countries as Poland is a non-nuclear-weapon State party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Both France and the UK still labour under delusions of being global powers and have pretensions of providing “extended deterrence” to their European friends as the US distances itself.
In the UK, Prime Minister Starmer is cutting support to pensioners and other social programmes, as well as overseas development assistance, to fund new nuclear-missile submarines and maintaining an arsenal of about 260 operational nuclear weapons.
In France, President Macron is reversing President de Gaulle’s policy and is openly offering to bring in EU countries under a French nuclear “umbrella”, even as the economy declines and social problems increase.
While France has about 300 operational nuclear warheads, it has permanently closed and dismantled it nuclear weapon test sites and facilities to make nuclear material for nuclear weapons.
Germany has reversed policy as well and will again host US medium-range nuclear-armed ballistic missiles; as will the UK which will bring back US nuclear-armed bombers.
The 55-year old NPT system is on the verge of collapse and it that happens the result will be a cascade of nuclear proliferation in Europe and the Asia-Pacific, warned Rauf.
Jackie Cabasso, Executive Director, Western States Legal Foundation, Oakland, California, told IPS talk of a potential “Eurobomb” goes back decades, but it has escalated sharply since the Trump administration’s antipathy towards its NATO allies has caused some of them to question the reliability of the U.S. commitment to Article 5 of the 1949 NATO treaty.
Article 5, at the heart of the treaty, commits NATO states to help out any member that comes under armed attack, with the response they deem appropriate, including military responses, widely understood to include the U.S. ‘nuclear umbrella’.
In 2020, French President Macron called for a ‘strategic dialogue’ on ‘the role of France’s nuclear deterrent in [Europe’s] collective security.’ In an attempt to open discussions on this issue with Germany, France repeated the offer in 2022, but there were no takers.
Last month, Macron offered to ‘open the strategic debate’ with interested European countries to determine ‘if there are new co-operations that may emerge’.” Officials from Germany, Poland, Denmark, Lithuania, and Latvia have welcomed Macron’s call for a strategic dialogue, which would also aim to include nuclear-armed UK.
“Donald Trump’s wildly erratic pronouncements and behavior makes it impossible to predict how the U.S. will react. But clues might be found in Project 2025, widely seen as the playbook for the second Trump administration,” she said.
Project 2025 seeks to ‘Transform NATO so that U.S. allies are capable of fielding the great majority of the conventional forces required to deter Russia while relying on the United States primarily for our nuclear deterrent, and select other capabilities while reducing the U.S. force posture in Europe’.
While Trump threatened to withdraw the U.S. from NATO during his first term, the U.S. government as a whole is deeply committed to NATO, as is illustrated by the fact that in 2024 Congress passed, and President Biden signed, a law – supported by then Senator/now Secretary of State Marco Rubio, requiring that a withdrawal from NATO be approved by Congress.
“I think it’s unlikely, though not impossible, that the Trump administration will pull the U.S. out of NATO”, said Cabasso.
But, in light of the Russian Federation’s ongoing illegal war of aggression in Ukraine with its attendant drumbeat of nuclear threats, and a U.S. ally increasing seen as unreliable, a number of former and current European government officials and politicians have called for some form of an independent European nuclear force.
Such a development would violate the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and other applicable laws. But more alarming is the growing normalization of nuclear threats and legitimization of nuclear proliferation suggested by its proponents.
At a time when all of the nuclear armed states are qualitatively and, in some cases, quantitatively upgrading their nuclear arsenals, a new multipolar arms race is underway, and the dangers of wars among nuclear armed states are growing. Adding more nuclear-armed actors to the world stage is a truly terrifying prospect.
Germany and other NATO members should rebuff any suggestion of acquiring nuclear weapons and take the lead in rejecting reliance on nuclear weapons, use every diplomatic means at their disposal to lower the temperature with Russia and bring the Ukraine war to an end, and promote negotiations among nuclear-armed states to begin the process of nuclear disarmament.
Instead of engaging in a strategic dialogue about a potential Eurobomb, European leaders should be engaging in a dialogue to commence negotiations on a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Europe, ultimately to include Russia. It’s very difficult to imagine in these dark times, but as Albert Einstein said, ‘Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions’.
Elaborating further, Rauf also pointed out that the 1996 nuclear-test-ban treaty languishes and still is not in force, nuclear explosive testing moratoria seemingly are hanging by a thread. We are now in a much more precarious situation regarding accidental or deliberate nuclear war, than even in the worst times of the Cold War. Political leadership is absent – the challenges seem beyond the ken of today’s leaders who are desperately flailing for solutions.
It is well past time to dial back the confrontational rhetoric and heed the call of the UN Secretary-General addressing the UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, “The nuclear option is not an option at all. It is a one-way road to annihilation. We need to avoid this dead-end at all costs. Humanity is counting on us to get this right. Let us keep working to deliver the safe, secure and peaceful world that every person needs and deserve.”
In an article published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) last January, Dr Wilfred Wan and Dr Gitte du Plessis, point out that in July 2024 Norway’s Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace signed a contract with the Norwegian Defence Materiel Agency (NDMA) for the development of a next-generation ‘supersonic strike missile’, as part of a collaborative project between Norway and Germany first announced in November 2023. The plan is for the new manoeuvrable naval strike missile, dubbed the Tyrfing, to be operational in 2035.
This is just one of several recent high-profile efforts involving Nordic states that aim to enhance European conventional capabilities in order to deter aggression and maintain strategic stability.
Others include Finland’s announcement, in May 2024, that it is acquiring Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range (JASSM-ER) weapons from the United States, which comes on top of its 2021 order of US F-35 combat aircraft. Around the same time, Sweden announced that it would provide Ukraine with early warning and control aircraft equipped with its Erieye radar system. This is expected to represent a ‘big force multiplier’ for Ukraine’s F-16 combat aircraft.
These moves in the Nordic region reflect broader European trends in the development and deployment of advanced conventional precision-strike capabilities. Investments in longer-range, manoeuvrable missiles and delivery systems—including the Tyrfing and the planned deployment on German soil of US hypersonic systems and ground-launched missiles that would have been prohibited under the now-defunct Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty)—contribute to the spectre of a ‘new missile crisis’ in Europe.
Planned upgrades to European global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) will further bolster the ability of these weapon systems to rapidly locate, target and ultimately destroy targets.
For the Nordic states, and especially for new NATO members Finland and Sweden, Russia’s war in Ukraine has provided clear justification for such developments. They are seeking both to demonstrate solidarity with other NATO members and to strengthen the alliance’s conventional capabilities in order to complement the extended US nuclear deterrent. But these decisions have many implications—and come with risks—that European policymakers may not have fully considered.
This article is brought to you by IPS Noram, in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International, in consultative status with the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
IPS UN Bureau Report
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