A Euro-bomb or a German nuclear bomb. Or a German-French bomb, or a German- French- British bomb, the corridors of European chancelleries are buzzing with officials dusting off Cold War files for non-American nuclear options in response to uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s apparent preference for Russia over NATO. Without the supposed deterring effect of US nuclear weapons, how can Europe stand up to Russian nuclear threats? Many convinced Atlanticists now thank France’s General de Gaulle for creating a bomb that can wreak havoc in ‘toute directions’ outside of the American nuclear ‘umbrella’.
In reality, President Vladimir Putin has neither been able to use his nuclear arsenal to intimidate Ukraine, nor deter Kyiv from attacking Moscow, invading Russian territory and destroying nuclear warning radars and strategic air force bomber bases. The radiation from a Russian nuclear attack would harm Russians and destroy its reputation across the world. Nor would even the incineration of the people of Kyiv guarantee victory.
Palpable fears
Nevertheless, the fear of nuclear war haunts the public mind with Russia’s coded threats and the risks of escalation. US policy makers, perhaps pleased that their policy of squeezing Russia has produced such an ill-considered invasion, were then concerned that enabling Ukraine to defeat Russia on the battlefield would turn into nuclear war or precipitate the collapse of Russia into a vast failed state – or both.
In raising the issue of some form of shared nuclear force, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s own experience in the German army as a conscript in the 1970s makes him uniquely informed amongst today’s leaders about the self-destructive realities of nuclear war should deterrence fail. As an artilleryman in the Bundeswehr, his unit would have been likely equipped with artillery guns supplied with US-controlled nuclear artillery shells with an explosive power up to that of the weapons used on Japan in 1945. Thousands of these nuclear shells were built in the US, – shipped to Europe and stashed in bunkers in Germany. That NATO regarded it as rational, even essential to its strategy, to have weapons that would inevitably have destroyed Germans and Germany was and is sobering to for any loose talk of Eurobombs.
