Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 51, no. 6, December 2009–January 2010, pp. 63–76
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In September 2009 US President Barack Obama announced his decision to shelve the previous Bush administration’s plans to install missile-defence components in Poland and the Czech Republic. Obama said that his administration would refocus missile-defence efforts on more proven technology using sea-based interceptors closer to the anticipated launch sites of Iranian missiles. The new administration also indicated that it would base future missile-defence architecture on enhanced collaboration with NATO allies more broadly, rather than bilateral arrangements with specific allies in Central Europe.
Along with the president’s Prague speech of April 2009 endorsing the goal of global elimination of nuclear weapons, his decision on missile defence sets the stage for an important reconsideration of the role of nuclear weapons in NATO’s defence plans. Although their numbers have been greatly reduced, nuclear weapons still play a significant role in those plans. This will not change any time soon, but the recent American initiatives do suggest that the Alliance should start thinking about a future in which those weapons are no longer deployed in Europe. In particular, technological advances should make it possible for NATO to consider a future in which the security of its members is based more on missile defences than on US nuclear weapons based on European NATO territories.
Since the 1960s, NATO has practiced ‘nuclear sharing’: the United States deploys nuclear weapons and delivery systems under its strict control in Europe, while some European allies maintain aircraft and (formerly) ballistic missiles for delivery of US nuclear weapons during wartime, and most other members participate in the NATO Nuclear Planning Group. This arrangement has had four functions: to deter the Soviet Union and latterly to hedge against Russian recidivism; to bind the United States to Europe by making the American commitment more credible and visible; to remove incentives for US allies to develop their own nuclear weapons; and to give allies a voice in nuclear force planning.
Today, many believe this arrangement is obsolete. In particular, some German politicians and non-governmental experts argue that US nuclear weapons should be removed from the country as a contribution to the goal of global elimination of nuclear weapons declared by US President Barack Obama in his Prague speech of April 2009. Others in Europe and America maintain that terminating nuclear-sharing arrangements and removing all US nuclear forces from Europe would sharpen the difference within the Alliance between nuclear haves and have-nots. Nuclear weapons would again become symbols of national power and prestige, with negative effects on the political dynamic within NATO. With political decisions looming over modernisation of ageing nuclear delivery systems in Europe, the controversy is set to heat up.
Modernising nuclear forces
The Alliance is already practicing a strategy of minimum nuclear deterrence. At the peak of the Cold War, more than 7,000 US non-strategic nuclear weapons on a wide variety of platforms were available in Europe. Today, only about 200 B61 gravity bombs remain. This weapon, introduced in 1966 and subsequently modified several times, is nominally one of oldest in...
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Oliver Thränert is a Senior Fellow in the International Security Research Division of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Berlin.
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