Europe is Quietly Debating a Nuclear Future Without the US

Ever since the advent of nuclear arms, Europe has been protected by an American nuclear umbrella. It was the United States that promised NATO allies that any nuclear aggression by the Soviet Union, and later, by Russia, would be answered with a barrage of U.S. missiles.

For seven decades, this arrangement allowed Western Europe to focus on recovering from the devastation of the 20th century’s two world wars instead of developing costly nuclear capabilities. Only France and the U.K. developed small national arsenals, and they were just a fraction the size of those controlled by the Cold War superpowers.

First, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine revealed that Moscow has grown eager to expand its empire by use of force. In the last three years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly engaged in nuclear saber-rattling to get his way. In recent months, he has conducted military exercises together with Belarus that include the use of tactical nuclear weapons, which has heightened anxiety in Europe, particularly in those countries bordering Ukraine or Russia.

Second, after his election in 2016, former U.S. President Donald Trump changed the United States’ posture toward NATO, taking a far more transactional approach to the alliance by saying that the United States might come to the aid of only those countries that pay their fair share for defense spending. And just days after Macron’s speech in Sweden, as if on cue, Trump made that threat explicit, telling a rally of supporters in South Carolina that he’d already informed the president of an unnamed European country that the U.S. would not protect them from a Russia attack if they were in arrears.