Although a second Donald Trump presidency is not a foregone conclusion, NATO members are preparing for shield the organization against Trump and are reviewing their defense strategies.
NATO’s concern about Trump’s re-election increased with his comment in February that would encourage Russia to do whatever it wanted if some countries didn’t pay, defying NATO’s principle that an attack on one was an attack on all.
Trump’s comments represent a radical change in American foreign policy. No US president had ever made these types of threats about his commitment to NATO before, forcing Europe to prepare to confront Russian aggression without US support.
On the eve of NATO’s 75th anniversary summit in Washington DC in July, the situation is so worrying that one of the main parties in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party, has called on Europe to build its own nuclear umbrella without the United States.
Of course, all of this comes to a head at a time when the West faces the greatest threat to its security since the Second World War, making debates over NATO’s nuclear shield more relevant.
Although Russia is unlikely to use nuclear weapons in this conflict in Ukraine, some experts warn that assuming that NATO’s current nuclear deterrent is sufficient is foolhardy.
Putin has made it clear that Russia is ready and willing to use nuclear weapons if necessary. Putin may believe that limited use of nuclear weapons would not escalate the war enough to involve the United States, making it more likely that Russia could use its nuclear arsenal in its next conflict to gain a large advantage (or possibly in a later phase of the current one).
The logic of nuclear deterrence presupposes that all actors are rational, have complete information and can use it to predict what others will do.
Putin has shown that he is a risk-taker and has poor military intelligencewhich can lead to massive miscalculations, especially if NATO remains complacent.
Putin may also assume that the United States under Trump would be mostly concerned with its domestic political opponents, giving Russia the opportunity to go ahead and do whatever it wants. Recently leaked documents from Russian military archives have shown that their threshold for using nuclear weapons is surprisingly low, especially if conventional methods are not working.
With two of the biggest superpowers led by wild card Putin, and potentially Trump, NATO members are rethinking their nuclear strategy. Both the United Kingdom and France have nuclear capabilities, providing an independent nuclear deterrent.
However, NATO deterrence relies primarily on US nuclear weapons deployed in Europe, of which there are about 100 non-strategic warheads (up from 7,500 in the 1980s) deployed in five NATO countries: Belgium , Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey. Compared, Russia has about 6,000 nuclear weapons – the largest arsenal in the world – and can launch them from land, sea and air.
Russian nuclear weapons are deployed at dozens of military bases in Russia, and some tactical nuclear weapons have recently been moved to Belarus.
Most worrying may be Russia’s confirmation in 2018 that it has nuclear-capable Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania.
Although Russia’s nuclear modernization drive has not been a great success, the Kremlin has used the threat of nuclear weapons to temper the West’s response to Russian aggression.
Although the conflict in Ukraine has made the issue of nuclear deterrence more urgent, it is not the first time that European powers have expressed concern about their own vulnerabilities. In 2020, French President Emmanuel Macron raised the alarm about the United States’ commitment to NATO and offered to make France’s nuclear deterrent the center of European defense strategy.
At the time, NATO Secretary General Jens Soltenberg dismissed this suggestion, arguing that it made more strategic sense to rely on the US nuclear umbrella.
France and the United Kingdom are far behind Russia. France has about 290 nuclear warheads, that can be deployed in a short time, both from the air and from the sea.
The United Kingdom decided in 2021 to increase the number of nuclear weapons to 225, with the goal of reaching 260 warheads in 2025.
Unlike Europe, The US has a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons, just below Russia’s, with 5,244, which includes nuclear submarines, long-range bombers and intercontinental missiles. He has also been flying B-52 strategic bombers near the Russian border in the Gulf of Finland, as a show of force to the Russians.
But a Trump presidency may give Putin the impression that he is unlikely to face consequences for his actions from the United States, which has been at the center of NATO’s current nuclear deterrent plan. This would put more pressure on Europe to demonstrate his resolve.
Poland, for example, has made clear that it is ready and able to host nuclear weapons, while the Baltic countries have increased their own military spending. Close to Kaliningrad, the Baltic countries have important energy and telecommunications infrastructure, which makes the area especially vulnerable.
While some experts advocate increasing NATO’s nuclear capabilities and sharing programs, others argue that NATO’s most important source of deterrence comes from political unity and its advanced conventional forces.
Increasing nuclear weapons capabilities may make Russia feel more threatened and more likely to take risks. A related view is that the Ukraine war has demonstrated that there is no effective nuclear deterrent. The existence of tactical nuclear weapons (of which Russia has 2,000), which are smaller and more precise, increases the likelihood that they will be used because they are smaller.
Whatever course of action comes with enormous risks and potential devastation. And it is important to note that the nuclear weapon launched on Hiroshima in 1945 was a “small” nuclear weapon – and yet it had the power to kill 140,000 people with generations later still suffering from diseases.
Modern nuclear weapons are 3,000 times more powerful. That is why it is so important to develop a coherent and effective nuclear strategy that prevents its use.
*This article was originally published on The Conversation.
(With information from Reuters)
