One of the giant issues involved in this is nuclear deterrence. The “balance of terror” in the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) concept has been that both the US and Russia/USSR knew that if they initiated a nuclear attack on the other, they would also be hit with a full-on nuclear attack. And this “nuclear umbrella” has also in the past extended to Russian use of nuclear arms in Europe.
The case of Stanislav Petrov, known (rightly) as “the man who saved the world” – or who at least saved humanity – illustrates what a miracle it is that we’ve gone almost exactly 80 years without an atomic bomb being used in wartime.
Stanislav Petrov (1939-2017), who made the key decision that the human
race should still be around after 1983
In a present-tense account of his life, Stella Kleinman writes:
Petrov retires from the research institution [where he then worked] to care for his wife as she battles cancer. After she passes away in 1997, he lives alone in Fryazino, a suburb of Moscow, with his army pension. At one point he resorts to growing potatoes to feed himself. He is haunted by the [1983] affair, claiming that nuclear weapons require human actions and that “a person can always make a mistake.”
“Petrov argues that only the complete elimination of nuclear weapons by all countries will spare the world from an eventual strike. Petrov does not trust people, nor does he trust machines. What he trusts least of all is a person who becomes a cog in a machine.” (1)
But it was and is a critical aspect of preventing nuclear war to reduce the amount of nuclear arms in the world. But the post-1989 world, and the United States in particular, frittered away the opportunity to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world. Donald Trump, with his first-term decision to pull out of the JCPOA nonproliferation agreement with Iran and his decision this year to join Israel in a joint “twelve-day war” against Iran, just set back the nonproliferation cause even further. The fact that Trump probably has only the most rudimentary understand of either nuclear arms control or the international nonproliferation regime is also not a promising sign.
The New START treaty of the US and Russia is the most important nuclear-arms limitation agreement currently in force. Under the Biden Administration, both countries agreed to extend it until February 5, 2026. (2) What Trump 2.0 decides to do with that treat next February could very easily be the most consequential decision he makes. Short of starting a nuclear war himself, of course.
Tara Dordenko wrote earlier this year:
The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the last remaining bilateral arms control treaty between the United States and Russia, will expire one year from today, on February 5, 2026. New START legally limits the number of long-range nuclear weapons both countries can deploy. Moreover, it seems unlikely that a follow-on agreement will be negotiated and finalized in the year remaining. [my emphasis] (3)
It would certainly be in the interest of Europe – and the rest of the world – for this agreement to be extended.
The issue of a European “nuclear shield” involves France and Britain cooperating to make a credible commitment to Mutually Assured Destruction against a Russian nuclear attack since the American one has already lost much of its credibility.
It will also inevitably include discussions that have already begun about whether Germany and Poland should develop their own nuclear arsenals as deterrence.
The MAD concept of deterrence is a framework that does not have to do with Russian or US intensions. It’s a truism, not always observed as strictly as it should be, that civilian officials are responsible for measuring the intentions of potential adversaries while the military concentrates on the capabilities. Nuclear missiles are capabilities. And even if relations between Russia and the US, and between Russia and Europe, were on the friendliest of terms, the fact that the other side has the capabilities of making a devastating nuclear attack still have to be taken into full account.
That’s why verifiable limitations on the number and types of nuclear weapons are so critical. But as long as those capabilities are there, the civilian policymakers will have to take full account of that fact.
That need for defense cooperation between the EU nations and Britain also has larger implications. Timothy Garton Ash recently wrote:
Just like Tony Blair a quarter-century ago, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government has talked of Britain being a “bridge” between Europe and the US. But what kind of a bridge can it be today, when the UK is outside the EU and Trump is putting in question the whole transatlantic relationship, with a special animus towards the EU?
There was only ever one way to take Brexit to its logical conclusion, and that was to become an offshore Greater Switzerland, a north European Singapore. To seek profit wherever you could find it, whatever those states were doing to their neighbours or their own citizens; to be a nation with the morals of a hedge fund. Ironically enough, the European country that comes closest to this cynical “multialigning” is Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, a full member state of the EU. But this was never a serious option even for the majority of Brexiters, who had five or six different (and generally vague) visions of what a post-Brexit Britain should be. For most Britons, it would be completely incompatible with our sense of what Britain should do and be in the world. (4)
In other words, the new geopolitical situation is presenting European nations including Britain with pressing choices to be made – and not just about strictly military issues alone – that did not seem so pressing when Joe Biden was still in the White House. Such as possibly rejoining the EU.
Garton Ash laments that Starmer is “[s]trangely maladroit in domestic politics.” But:
His cabinet is full of individuals who, like him, seem well-intentioned, competent and decent. A little boring perhaps – but a glance at the Trump administration shows you there are worse things than that. The UK has a heap of problems, but so does every European country I know. British democracy has survived the stress test of Brexit better than US democracy is surviving that of Trump. Socially and culturally, there is still much to be said for Britain’s everyday tolerance, creativity and humour. [my emphasis]
Yes, it’s becoming common in European political commentary to point to Trump’s 2.0 regime as a cautionary tale about how democracy can be undermined. Sadly, with good reason.
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