Abstract
Despite growing insecurity all around them, Europeans remain unwilling to renew their thinking around nuclear deterrence. In 2018, the European Council on Foreign Relations conducted a comprehensive survey of attitudes towards nuclear issues across the member states of the European Union. Two overarching themes emerged. Firstly, despite the growing insecurity all around them, Europeans remain unwilling to face up to the renewed relevance that nuclear deterrence ought to have in their strategic thinking. Secondly, and as a consequence, national attitudes remain much where they were when the subject dropped off the agenda at the end of the cold war – which is to say, scattered across the entire spectrum from those who continue to see nuclear deterrence as an essential underpinning of European security to enduring advocates of unilateral nuclear disarmament. “Strategic autonomy” will continue to be an empty phrase unless Europeans engage seriously on the nuclear dimension. There are many ways in which Europe can move towards this goal, but without taking into account the nuclear dimension of their autonomy, Europeans will continue to believe that Russia will always hold the whip hand in any military confrontation with a Europe not backed by a credible US nuclear guarantee. The absence of a European deterrent, thus, may prove to be a fatal flaw. No immediate European initiative to declare strategic nuclear autonomy is practicable, desirable, or even conceivable – but a strategy to hedge against the uncertainties of the future is certainly available. President Macron is expected to give his keynote speech on nuclear deterrence in 2019 – as his predecessors have done before him. One will see whether cooperation with Germany or the UK will be put forward, but UK and France could convert the idea of a European deterrent from a mere notion into a credible offer, by thickening their bilateral nuclear cooperation and hinting ever more clearly at their readiness to protect others.
Panel: History and Prospect for a European Deterrent
Cite this presentation
@inproceedings{eiss-2019-european-perceptions-of-nuclear-deterrence-in-the-era-of-trump-and-putin-and-the,
author = {Tara Varma},
title = {European Perceptions of Nuclear Deterrence in the Era of Trump and Putin and the Path to European Strategic Autonomy},
booktitle = {European Security Studies Conference 2019},
year = {2019},
url = {https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2019-european-perceptions-of-nuclear-deterrence-in-the-era-of-trump-and-putin-and-the.html}
}