Should NATO deploy B61 bombs to Poland or the Baltics to respond to Russia’s westward military movement and nuclear flexing? Two nuclear experts disagreed about possible answers to this question during a July 1 discussion on Capitol Hill. Steven Pifer, Director of Brookings Institution’s Arms Control Initiative, dismissed the idea, saying it would be “provocative” and make the nukes more vulnerable amid a potential crisis with Russia. “This would be really provocative, on par with 1962 and the Soviets putting nuclear weapons into Cuba,” Pifer said during a Peter Huessy Congressional Breakfast Series discussion. “And…it would be the kind of thing I think that would cause rifts within NATO.” Pifer added that NATO should mainly focus on maintaining conventional hedges to offset potential Russian aggression.
Rebeccah Heinrichs, a Marshall Institute fellow and a Hudson Institute adjunct fellow, during the same discussion said the U.S. should “quietly” discuss the B61’s deployment with NATO. “I believe that it is worth quietly working with NATO in discussing the deployment of the B61,” she said. “I don’t think that we should be talking about this openly and aggressively bullying NATO to do this. Obviously, this is for their own security as well, but I certainly can see a shift in NATO already over the last couple of years in what it is willing to do, and I think as we’ve seen with Russia continuing to increase its provocations that this isn’t something that NATO might see as completely ridiculous over the next coming years.”
Pifer, also a senior fellow at Brookings’ Center on the United States and Europe, also cautioned against scaling back NATO’s nuclear posture in Europe. “[N]ow is not the time to be reducing the American nuclear presence in Europe,” he said. “But by the same token, I think the plans that are still under way for the deployment of the F-35 coming up and the B61 modernization are going to suffice for the NATO nuclear posture. Any additional steps, I think, would actually be difficult within NATO.”