Europe's Defense Needs More Than Nuclear Weapons

The U.S. seems to be on its way out of Europe. And this is not just the Trump administration’s doing. America has more pertinent issues at its doorstep, from a fiscal crisis to a menacing China. From this departure, Europeans have to figure out what to do and how to defend themselves. Some have written of the possibility of Europeans building up their own nuclear arsenals or for France and the United Kingdom to increase their nuclear capabilities to defend the rest of Europe. Having Europeans relying on nuclear weapons is appealing: it’s cheaper than non-nuclear capabilities—conventional weapons. It’s defense on the cheap. But Europeans should resist the siren calls for more nuclear weapons. More of them won’t protect Europe.

The most obvious case against increasing Europe’s nuclear capabilities is that Russia just has far too many, 4,400 warheads to be exact. This is leagues ahead of the combined 515 warheads that the United Kingdom and France have. It would be very difficult for Europe, specifically France and the United Kingdom, to match Russia’s amount. And if both aim to protect other European countries with nuclear weapons, they would have to match, if not out-match, Russia’s number of nuclear weapons to reassure its allies that they would come to their rescue.

There’s also the issue of nuclear weapons being limited in solving political problems. War and military capabilities are meant to have political goals, some tangible achievement. Nuclear weapons have selected political purposes for truly existential crises. For Europe, its political goals are to deter a Russian invasion of its eastern neighbors to prevent a fait accompli. It’s difficult to envision a scenario where the benefits of using nuclear weapons outweigh their costs. The European continent is small compared to Russia or North America, making the detonation of just one of these weapons horrific and costly for the entirety of Europe. And nuclear weapons have a slim chance in deterring a limited aims attack. The use of nuclear weapons here is overkill, and thus uncredible. It is hard to imagine Paris using nuclear weapons on behalf of Vilnius in Lithuania. At the end of the day, nuclear weapons aren’t credible enough for achieving Europe’s political goals.