May 25, 2015

Expert: U.S. Should Share Tactical Nuclear Burden with NATO

By ExchangeMonitor

As developments over the past year seem to have strengthened NATO’s desire to keep U.S. tactical nukes in Europe, the “burden” for those weapons should be shared, a top nuclear policy analyst said during a speech in Washington on Friday. “[T]here’s absolutely no reason the United States of America should bear the sole burden of providing a nuclear umbrella over the alliance,” Frank Miller, a Principal at the Scowcroft Group, said during a Peter Huessy Breakfast Series speech. “The involvement of allied forces implicates them in their own defense as it implicates us in their defense[.]”

The U.S. is the only state known to provide nuclear weapons to NATO for sharing. Miller noted that members that joined NATO post-Cold War did so largely to get under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, and that allies’ desire to stay shielded has increased. “[I]ndeed over the last twelve months, the attachment to those weapons has grown.” The last year has involved the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Crimea, fighting of Russian separatists and Ukrainian loyalists in eastern Ukraine, and nuclear saber-rattling by Russian President Vladimir Putin. NATO members who joined after the Cold War comprise the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania and Croatia.

Comments are closed.