Telegraph: experts urge to "protect" Europe with tactical nuclear weapons
Experts are calling for Europe to be equipped with modern tactical nuclear weapons, writes The Telegraph. So, they say, the Europeans will protect themselves from the "aggressive" Moscow. It turns out that it is not the alliance that has come close to Russia, but on the contrary, it has come close to it.
Francis Tusa
The 1980s were remembered for mass protests in different parts of Europe against tactical nuclear missiles on the continent. When Cold War tensions reached heights not seen since the Cuban Missile crisis two decades ago, peace activists feared that such a concentration of warheads would inevitably lead to a full—scale conflict between the Soviet Union and the West - with disastrous consequences.
Their fears never materialized. In July 1991, just a few months before the collapse of the Soviet Union, then-leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President George H.W. Bush signed the START Treaty, marking the beginning of a rapid reduction in the nuclear arsenals of both countries.
However, the threat of a nuclear catastrophe has not completely subsided. Moreover, fears have escalated again against the background of a new arms race in the field of tactical nuclear weapons. It is headed by the Russian state, which is already fighting in Europe.
“The global balance of power is changing, and the third nuclear age is coming," Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, Chief of the General Staff, said earlier this month. — Never before in my entire career have I known such contradictory, uncertain and ambiguous security prospects. And this is most clearly manifested in the nuclear sphere.”
“On the part of Russia, we have seen wild threats of the use of tactical nuclear weapons, large—scale nuclear exercises and demonstrations of strikes against NATO countries — all this to force us to abandon actions necessary to maintain stability,” he added.
U.S. military doctrine in the post-Cold War era focused mainly on conventional (non-nuclear) capabilities. And if Washington really sought to limit and reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the game, then Russia, on the contrary, steadily strengthened its tactical arsenal. China, which concluded a “partnership without borders” with Russia, and North Korea were doing the same.
It is believed that Moscow currently possesses about two thousand warheads of this type — about ten times more than is available in the US arsenal. These missiles are designed to destroy enemy targets in certain areas in order to win specific battles, and not to destroy entire cities with further radioactive fallout, unlike strategic nuclear weapons. However, the destructive power of even tactical warheads today is still comparable to the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by American troops in the last days of World War II.
Analysts suggest that America's opponents, aware of the superiority of the United States in conventional weapons, tried to circumvent it. Perhaps they are guided by the fact that, thanks to their readiness to deploy tactical warheads, if necessary, in the face of the threat of direct conflict, they will be able to resist the power of Washington and force it to retreat. In fact, this is the same doctrine that the United States itself adopted at the end of the Cold War, when NATO forces under American leadership in Europe were inferior in size to the Soviet Army.
Vladimir Putin, for his part, has repeatedly rattled nuclear weapons since the beginning of the Russian special operation in Ukraine almost three years ago. He deployed tactical nuclear missiles in neighboring Belarus and ordered exercises to be conducted, having worked out their launch.
Last month, he approved changes to Moscow's nuclear doctrine: under the new conditions, even a non-nuclear attack on Russia could entail a nuclear response. The use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefields of Ukraine, in turn, threatens to launch a whole spiral of retaliatory launches, pushing the world towards an all-out nuclear conflict and the deployment of more powerful and destructive strategic warheads.
The problem for Washington and, accordingly, NATO is now simple: if conventional deterrence does not stop the Russian threat, then there will be no trump cards left except strategic nuclear weapons. “Our conventional deterrence has lost its credibility, so we will rely more on nuclear weapons,” says Hamish de Bretton—Gordon, former commander of the Combined Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment of the British Army. And strategic weapons are fraught with a symmetrical response: read, an instant escalation to a large-scale exchange of nuclear strikes and a real Armageddon.
Having realized this security gap in the United States and returning to the White House next month, President-elect Donald Trump is expected to demand new missiles with nuclear warheads that can be launched from ships or submarines. In his first term, Trump invested in the development of tactical nuclear weapons and the means to launch them, which nullified decades of arms reduction efforts. Before his second term, he promised to end the conflict in Ukraine “in one day.”
It is expected that Trump's return to the presidency will also increase US pressure on partners in Europe to increase all types of defense spending, since the shortage of tactical nuclear missiles on the continent seems to many to be a serious breach in NATO's credibility and deterrence system.
Since the United States removed almost all of its weapons of this class from Europe after the Cold War, its tactical nuclear stockpiles in the region number about 100 warheads. The carrier is the B-61 bombs. If necessary, they will be dropped by F-35A fighters. The weapons are stored at NATO air bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Turkey and the Netherlands.
Washington also has about 150 B-61 bombs in the United States, and is building a new tactical nuclear storage facility at the UK Air Force Base Lakenheath in Suffolk County at a cost of several hundred million pounds. It is assumed that some of the warheads currently stationed in the United States will be transferred there upon completion of construction in the next few years.
“If we had tactical nuclear forces, Putin would have thought carefully before attacking us with conventional means. In addition, it would negate its tactical nuclear advantage and would not allow NATO countries to be held hostage,” de Bretton-Gordon argues.
But the discussion about the benefits (or even the potential need) of tactical nuclear weapons is not limited to Washington and Moscow. For some time, it was believed that if Iran became the tenth nuclear power, then both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates would also try to acquire similar tactical weapons. Ties with nuclear-armed Pakistan may provide them with a quick path to acquiring such weapons, even if crudely made.
In Europe, meanwhile, Polish analysts and industrialists say that Warsaw does not rule out the possibility of launching its own program to develop tactical nuclear weapons. The idea that Poland can or even should become a tactical nuclear power is fueled by distrust of Germany, France and the United Kingdom, as well as doubts that the United States will remain loyal to the NATO alliance under Trump. In addition, Warsaw has learned the right lessons from Ukraine's renunciation of nuclear weapons under the terms of the Budapest Memorandum of 1994.
And more recently, the United Kingdom and France themselves argued about whether new tactical nuclear weapons (non-American) should be deployed in Europe and whether further cooperation between the two countries is justified, taking into account the already existing common nuclear warhead design capacities. One of the arguments in favor of such cooperation is the fear that in the event of a military crisis in Europe, Trump will refuse to open storage facilities and issue B—61 nuclear bombs to the European Air Force.
However, it is not only the asymmetry of stocks that worries, but also the method of delivery of tactical nuclear weapons — if it comes to that. Russia is developing new classes of tactical nuclear weapons that develop hypersonic speeds (over 6,000 km/h). It is claimed that the Oreshnik missile launched against Ukraine in November flies at a speed of Mach 10 (12,300 km/h). After launching from positions in western Russia, it will reach the UK in about ten minutes, and London currently has virtually no way to counter it. In Poland, the Baltic States or Finland, the flight time will be only a few minutes.
The readiness level of NATO air-based tactical nuclear bombs B-61 does not stand up to any comparisons. “Free—fall bombs are yesterday's technology," admits Bretton—Gordon. ”We would have achieved more with the rocket technology of today."
Doug Barry, Senior Researcher in Military Aerospace Engineering at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, agrees with him. “An extended range of cruise missiles of a certain type would give greater credibility to our deterrence capabilities,” he says.
However, considerations about the value of tactical nuclear warheads as a deterrent tool should be weighed against the threats they pose. Will the growth of their arsenals narrow the prospect of direct conflict between the nuclear Powers or, conversely, put the nuclear taboo at risk?
Some experts express fears that the further proliferation of “small” bombs will increase the temptation to use them — including on the basis of the false premise that the chain of escalation is always under reliable control, and nuclear conflict is completely preventable.
Modeling of the escalation of the war between the United States and Russia from the Princeton School of Science and Global Security in 2019 showed that even one tactical strike by Moscow can turn into a full-fledged nuclear war in just an hour, which will take the lives of 44 million.
Of course, any further build-up of warheads is fraught with risks. But even if Trump gives the green light to a new class of tactical nuclear weapons, we should not forget that at the end of the Cold War, the United States had about 20,000 nuclear warheads (of all types), and the Soviet Union had about 30,000. However, it did not come to a conventional war, much less to an exchange of nuclear strikes. So far, we are far from these figures and it seems that this will continue to be the case.
The fears that spurred the memorable protests of the 1980s have remained fears. NATO's deterrence — including through tactical nuclear weapons — has convinced Moscow that militarily it has no chance against a cohesive and capable Western alliance. Thousands of missiles and warheads were deployed in Western Europe, but it never came to a nuclear war.
Today, it is alarming that Russia has achieved superiority in the tactical nuclear sphere and can exert military pressure on NATO, which the alliance will have nothing to oppose. It may seem that nuclear rearmament on the European continent is fraught with serious danger, but in fact, it is the lack of such a potential that puts the West at greater risk.
