Europe’s Dr Strangeloves are getting excited at the prospect of building an autonomous nuclear umbrella for the Continent. It could be harder than they think.
Europe’s nuclear hawks need a reality check
France sought yesterday to calm speculation ahead of Emmanuel Macron’s speech next Monday about expanding the country’s nuclear deterrent to the rest of Europe. An Élysée spokesperson told reporters that although the speech would signal important “shifts and developments” Macron’s initiative would not compete with the American nuclear umbrella in Europe, adding that France remains committed to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“One element of our nuclear doctrine that is worth reiterating is our rejection of nuclear war. So we are not engaged in an arms race, so to speak, with the major arsenals. What is important is that our arsenal ensures our ability to inflict unacceptable damage,” the spokesperson said.
Talk about an independent European nuclear umbrella has become more heated since last month’s Munich security conference when a number of European leaders suggested that the American guarantee might no longer be enough. A combination of nuclear sabre rattling from Moscow and doubts about Washington’s enduring commitment to Nato have fuelled this anxiety.
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Poland’s president Karol Nawrocki said last week that his country should start developing its own nuclear weapons and Latvia’s prime minister Evika Siliņa said in Munich that she saw no downside to more European nukes.
“Nuclear deterrence can give us new opportunities. Why not?” she said. There are quite a few reasons why not, among them the fact that, as Patrick Smyth noted in an excellent column last Saturday, the credibility of the deterrence doctrine is itself contested. There are practical and technical problems too.
France and Britain are Europe’s only nuclear-armed powers and together they have the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal after Russia and the United States. France has about 290 nuclear warheads carried on four ballistic-missile submarines and air-launched cruise missiles while Britain’s 225 warheads are carried exclusively on submarines.
The French and British stockpiles are much smaller than the thousands held by Russia and the US but they are more than enough to destroy numerous cities. The advantage of submarine-based missiles is that they are hard to trace, so if a nuclear aggressor strikes first, a submarine could survive to strike back.
Talk of states like Poland developing their own nuclear weapon is fanciful, not only because it would be in breach of the NPT but because it would be hugely expensive and technologically challenging to make it meaningfully independent. So the discussion in Europe is really about using the French capability (and to a lesser extent the British) as the basis of a shared European guarantee.
The Élysée’s insistence that any new initiative would not compete with the US nuclear umbrella reflects the mainstream view in Europe that it should instead be a European pillar within Nato. The theory is that if Europe plays a bigger role in its own nuclear defence, it would be less dependent on US decisions.
The first issue about a European nuclear deterrent is that of who should make the decision to deploy a nuclear weapon, raising questions about European governance – qualified majority voting or unanimity, European Council or Commission – but touches on deeper issues of sovereignty and identity. During the Cold War, Europeans questioned whether the US would sacrifice New York for Berlin in the event of nuclear war and some today might ask if France would sacrifice Paris for Tallinn.
Britain’s Trident missiles rely on shared US infrastructure and logistical help but even if a European deterrent was as autonomous as France’s, it would still rely on American satellites and early warning systems to detect missile launches as they happen.
Building autonomous, space-based systems would cost billions of euro and take many years to develop, piling even more debt on European citizens who have already been asked to lower their expectations for social welfare and other domestic spending to pay for the current build-up in conventional weapons.
The Kremlin said this week that it would direct its nuclear arsenal against Estonia if that country hosted nuclear weapons aimed at Russia, and any new European deterrent risks an escalation of the threat from Russia. There is also no reason to believe that Washington would sit back and allow Europe to develop a truly autonomous nuclear deterrent in pursuit of a genuinely independent foreign policy.
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