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Trump's NATO Comments Trigger Defense Debate in Europe
With his recent comments on NATO, Donald Trump shocked the Western world. Is the U.S. preparing to abandon its allies? Europe finally seems to be considering a future in which the American nuclear umbrella no longer exists.
By Markus Becker, Ann-Dorit Boy, Matthias Gebauer, Oliver Imhof, Martin Knobbe, Marina Kormbaki, René Pfister und Britta Sandberg
16.02.2024, 18.49 Uhr
You certainly can’t accuse Donald Trump of keeping his antipathy for NATO a secret. Even before he was sworn in as president of the United States in January 2017, he called the trans-Atlantic alliance "obsolete." When then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited him in Washington for the first time that March, Trump reportedly opened their meeting by saying: "Angela, you owe me $1 trillion."
DER SPIEGEL 8/2024
The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 8/2024 (February 17th, 2024) of DER SPIEGEL.
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The sum was the product of a calculation made by Trump’s chief strategist at the time, Steve Bannon, and was rooted in Germany’s failure over the years to invest 2 percent of its economic output in its military, as NATO member states agreed to do in 2014.
NATO, of course, is not a collection agency. It is an alliance rooted in an existential promise as outlined in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty: An attack on any single NATO member state is an attack on all. This codified pledge of support is the beating heart of NATO. In the most extreme case, countries that are part of the alliance would even risk nuclear war on their own soil in order to defend the alliance – irrespective of how much money and materiel the partners contribute.
For decades, the Americans have been prepared to defend Europe with their weapons, including nuclear warheads. And in doing so, they have accepted the risk that a Russian bomb could ultimately detonate over New York or Baltimore. The mutual nuclear deterrence between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was one of the main reasons that the Cold War between East and West never became hot. And that countries like Germany have been able to live in peace for more than 70 years.
With just a few sentences, Trump – the former president of the U.S. who may soon be moving back into the White House – has now called this certainty into question. At a campaign event in South Carolina several days ago, he went off script. "If we don’t pay, and we are attacked by Russia, will you protect us?" Trump said, allegedly quoting from a conversation with a European leader. "No, I would not protect you," Trump said in response, adding to cheers that he would encourage Russia "to do whatever the hell they want." Even for him, it was rather extreme: Calling on an enemy country to attack a NATO ally should they not spend enough on their military.
It is the kind of language used by the mafia when extorting protection money. And it is a statement that must be the focus of every security policy debate in Germany and Europe from now on. "No, I would not protect you" marks the end of an era, and the beginning of a new one.
A Disengaged Chancellor
It is a debate that experts have long been demanding, but one that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), has been carefully avoiding: Must Europe, must Germany, prepare for a future in which Washington can no longer be depended on? Does Europe have to develop a joint army of its own? Does the EU need a commissioner for defense? Does Berlin have to pump vastly more money into its military, the Bundeswehr, than the 100-billion-euro special fund it supplied in reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?
And most importantly: Does Europe need its own nuclear deterrence that does not depend on the Americans? Does Europe need the bomb?
When the lead candidate for the SPD in this year’s European Parliament elections, ex-German Justice Minister Katarina Barley, addressed the elephant in the room in the German daily Tagesspiegel and demanded that a debate be launched about a possible European bomb, the commotion was significant. The comment, inveighed Johann Wadephul, a foreign policy expert with the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), "raises doubts about her political intellect." Barley’s party ally Ralf Stegner warned against "blindly" rearming, "especially not in the nuclear realm." And as he does so often, the chancellor focused on reassurance: "We have a NATO that works, an extremely strong trans-Atlantic partnership. The nuclear cooperation we have developed is also part of that."
They are sentences that seem strangely misplaced. Trump has a virtual lock on the Republican presidential nomination. And in some public opinion surveys, he is well ahead of incumbent Joe Biden, who 86 percent of Americans believe is too old to run for a second term. The chances of Trump being voted into the White House for a second term of his own currently look to be rather significant. The "extremely strong" trans-Atlantic partnership invoked by Scholz would immediately be history.
In recent years, Scholz has wrapped himself up in the hope that his friend Biden would find a way to be re-elected. The chancellor and his advisers have dismissed as unnecessary every discussion about the development of a European nuclear deterrence. That is now coming back to haunt him. "We need this debate," says Carlo Masala, a professor at the Bundeswehr University in Munich. Even if it is an extremely complicated one.
When Trump flew to NATO headquarters in Brussels for the first time as president in 2017 and was briefed on the mutual defense clause, he apparently said, according to Washington journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser in their book about Trump: "You mean, if the Russians attack Lithuania, we would start a war with Russia? That’s crazy."
A few weeks ago, European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton of France spoke about an episode with Trump at the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos. Thierry said that Trump, who was president at the time, told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen: "You need to understand that if Europe is under attack, we will never come to help you and to support you." He then added: "By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave. We will quit NATO."
There were, in other words, plenty of indications that the Western alliance under an isolationist president like Trump could in fact face an existential threat. Just that nobody really wanted to take it seriously – particularly not in the German Chancellery.
"The Europeans said: Thank God we don’t have to do anything. The Americans are back."
Carlo Masala, a professor at the Bundeswehr University in Munich
U.S. President Joe Biden together with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg
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U.S. President Joe Biden together with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg Foto: Susan Walsh / dpa
In many respects, Scholz has simply copied his predecessor in office, Angela Merkel – also some things on the negative side of the ledger. Just as Merkel promulgated the German illusion that Russian natural gas would always be cheap and available at no political cost, Scholz continues to cling to the fairy tale that the American nuclear umbrella can be depended on no matter what. In an interview with the influential German weekly Die Zeit just three weeks ago, Scholz said that his government "had decided to continue the nuclear cooperation with the U.S. and NATO."
As if the Americans should be grateful that they are allowed to keep protecting the Germans.
After Joe Biden’s swearing in on January 20, 2021, the Europeans should have begun developing an independent defense, says Masala, the professor at the Bundeswehr University. The election of the Democrat, he says, gave the Europeans a window of time to prepare for the return of a politician of Trump’s ilk. But then, Biden held a speech as part of the Munich Security Conference in 2021, saying "America is back," says Masala. "And the Europeans said: Thank God we don’t have to do anything. The Americans are back."
The Fear of Nuclear Blackmail
Ever since the founding of NATO on April 4, 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany has faithfully relied on the protection of American nuclear weapons. Germany’s first postwar chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, and his defense minister, Franz Josef Strauss, did seek in the 1950s to push for a European bomb with France and Italy in the 1950s. But the project failed in the face of resistance from Charles de Gaulle, then French prime minister, who was in favor of France pursuing its own nuclear weapon, the "Force de Frappe."
In the decades that followed, the Germans grew used to the American nuclear umbrella, and then they began rebelling against it. When Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of the SPD sought to station nuclear-armed, medium-range ballistic missiles in Germany in the 1980s as part of the NATO Double-Track Decision, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets.
But the Germans seemed to have lost their fear of the bombs once the Cold War came to an end. Today, hardly anyone protests the fact that U.S. nuclear warheads are stationed at an American airbase in Rhineland-Palatinate.
On the contrary, Germany must now worry about those weapons being brought back to the U.S. under Trump’s leadership – at a time when the threat from the east is greater than it has been for decades.
Since Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the fear of nuclear blackmail has returned. Experts from the Federation of American Scientists believe that Russia possesses around 6,000 nuclear warheads, almost half of the global stockpile. It is unclear under what conditions President Vladimir Putin would be prepared to deploy them. But he is more than happy to allow his propagandists to play with European fears of a nuclear strike.
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Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, for example, the current deputy head of the Russian Security Council, has threatened a "big war" with NATO. He has said he wants to destroy Ukraine and he has threated to "rain down" destruction on Berlin and to "mercilessly" destroy Russia’s enemies.
Russia has announced the stationing of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. They are mostly smaller warheads that could be used to blackmail Europe if it were to come to that.
Experts believe that Moscow has 2,600 tactical nukes at its disposal. According to the "escalate to de-escalate" concept of the Russian military, the Kremlin could deploy a tactical nuclear warhead to emerge victorious in a potential conflict. European nuclear powers would be faced with the choice of either doing nothing at all or responding with a strategic nuclear weapon. Both European nuclear powers, France and the United Kingdom, have elimanated their stocks of tactical nukes and only possess strategic weapons – a total of around 500 nuclear warheads. Using them would risk a larger nuclear war with Russia.
Ironically, it was the Trump administration that reacted to the imbalance in tactical nuclear weapons. The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review announced a less powerful warhead – to "counter any mistaken perception of an exploitable 'gap' in U.S. regional deterrence capabilities." In 2020, U.S. submarines were outfitted with the W76-2 warhead, which has a yield of five to seven kilotons of TNT. By comparison, the bomb used to destroy Hiroshima had a yield of 13 kilotons, and today’s strategic nuclear weapons have yields of several hundred kilotons.
"The ability to deter limited nuclear use is … key to deterring non-nuclear aggression," reads the U.S nuclear doctrine. In other words: Those who don’t have tactical nuclear weapons could become Putin’s next victims. And that would apply to Europe were the U.S. to fold up its nuclear umbrella.
The question is how quickly the Russian army would be able to launch another attack, given the losses it has sustained in Ukraine. Russia is thought to have lost fully 8,000 armored vehicles in the war, to name just one example. Only some of them have been replaced, and the new vehicles are of a poorer quality. Moscow has, however, made some qualitative improvements, says military expert Neil Melvin of the Royal United Services Institute in London. The Russian military, Melvin says, will likely emerge from the war both larger and more experienced than it was before.
The expert does not believe Russia will launch a broad assault on NATO member states. But Russia could attempt to take part of Estonia. With the help of the Americans, such an attack would likely be relatively simple to stop. But what if the U.S. pulled out of Europe? "There can be no credible deterrence with a U.S. President Trump," complains one officer from a NATO country in Brussels, who asked not to be quoted by name.
With nine months to go before the presidential election in the U.S., Europe now finds itself facing existential questions. What might a joint security and defense union look like? The most logical approach would seem to be that of using what is already there: The 300 or so French nuclear warheads complete with their delivery systems.
Pinning Hopes on the French Nuclear Arsenal
Two days after Trump’s comments on NATO, newly appointed French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné received two of his European counterparts in Château La Celle-Saint Cloud near Paris: Annalena Baerbock from Berlin and Radosław Sikorski from Warsaw. Following the government change in Warsaw, the French are now interested in reviving talks within the Weimar Triangle format between France, Germany and Poland. The focus: European security.
"We have lost too much time in Europe with debates that weren’t always productive. That is why I proposed to my colleagues today to move from arguments over positions to arguments over solutions," Séjourné said. Does that mean that the French are prepared to make their nuclear weapons available to Europe? "On that question, you would have to ask the president. Nuclear deterrence is his domain," the French foreign minister responded.
If the German-French relationship were healthy, talks on that question would have begun long ago. But because Scholz has thus far put all his security eggs in the Biden basket, he has failed to take advantage of the opportunity to launch an initiative together with French President Emmanuel Macron. The relationship with France is not in good shape, says defense expert Masala.
"For us Europeans, it is clear that we have to strengthen the European pillar of NATO, also as a signal to the U.S."
Lars Klingbeil, chairman of the SPD
On January 30, Macron indicated during a visit to Sweden how he views the French nuclear doctrine. Nuclear deterrence, he said, is of course in "France’s vital interests," he said. But it also has a "clear European dimension, which gives us a special responsibility."
Macron’s speech was at least a starting point. Masala believes that Europe’s only opportunity to develop a nuclear deterrence lies in the French arsenal, with European countries sharing the costs, for example.
In return, France would have to change its nuclear strategy and expand its deterrence beyond its national borders. But even if Macron were to agree to such a deal, what would happen if Marine Le Pen, from the right-wing populist Rassemblement National, were to win the presidency in 2027? This concern is one also held by Macron himself, say German diplomats.
It is still necessary to start the debate, says François Heisbourg, political adviser and security expert from the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique in Paris. "We need to discuss how far the countries that want this protection are willing to go. Would the Germans tolerate the stationing of French nuclear weapons on their soil?"
The chancellor’s party, the SPD, seems to currently be adjusting its position on that question. "For us Europeans, it is clear that we have to strengthen the European pillar of NATO, also as a signal to the U.S.: We are taking on more responsibility," says Lars Klingbeil, chair of the SPD.
Some moves have been made in recent years, he says: Defense spending across Europe has risen and Germany has invested in a European air defense system. "But one area in which we must make significant improvements is that of bundling European efforts – through joint acquisitions or in research and development," says Klingbeil. He is calling for an "internal European defense market" and a European defense commissioner. But even those kinds of reforms sound preprogrammed to trigger years of bickering within the EU.
Is that another reason why Scholz has been so quiet? The impression is that the chancellor isn’t interested in speaking about a European nuclear weapon, and he also apparently wants to keep his head in the sand about what might happen in the U.S. in November. He is betting everything on Biden’s re-election.
Scholz Sees Biden as a Soul Mate
In small groups, Scholz is more than happy to make barbs about politicians who he feels are overrated. That group includes pretty much everybody except for himself – and Joe Biden. He sees the U.S. president as a soul mate, an old-school politician who has his eye on the welfare of the common workers and governs with little fanfare.
But Scholz also shares his fate with Biden – namely the growing gap between his own impression of himself and the impression others hold of him. Both leaders have been struggling in the public opinion polls for many months and face difficult re-election battles. Which is why both have learned to spread optimism that isn’t necessarily rooted in the numbers. After all, Scholz’s support didn’t look all that hot in 2021 either, but he ended up in the Chancellery nevertheless.
Scholz was less than enthusiastic about Barley’s comments about nuclear weapons. She sounded as though she had already accepted Biden’s defeat.
But for how long can denial really be of any help? America’s willingness to protect Europe from all the evil in the world will continue to ebb – regardless of which president is currently in the White House. Trump would merely speed things up.
And yes, it is true that the Germans are currently fulfilling the NATO defense-spending target of 2 percent, in contrast to 13 other alliance member states. But that is largely because of the special fund passed in 2022. It will soon have been used up. What happens then?
Whereas Scholz is apparently eager to avoid all public debates, confidential meetings in the Chancellery, the Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry have discussed possible Trump scenarios. The embassy in Washington and the eight German consulates in the U.S. have been assigned the task of deepening relations with the Republicans so that if Trump does win, Germany won’t be as unprepared as it was in 2016. Confidential talks are also underway with the nuclear powers Britain and France – also at the insistence of the Chancellery.
On Monday, Scholz visited the arms producer Rheinmetall just south of Hamburg and took part in the groundbreaking ceremony for a new munitions factory. Plans call for domestic artillery production to be ramped up both to help supply Ukraine and to replenish Bundeswehr supplies. Though the move came late, Scholz has made rearming a priority.
But how reliable is Germany’s current willingness to take on a position of military leadership? And how credible is it when one’s own army is in such poor shape?
When it comes to questions regarding the condition of the German military, there is an answer out there. It comes from German General Alfons Mais, the commander of the German army and not exactly known for pathos. Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago, he sat down at his computer and spelled out his frustration: "The Bundeswehr, the army that I have the honor of leading, is essentially without supplies."
Because of the precarious equipment situation, he wrote, Germany was hardly in a position to support its allies within NATO. "We all saw it coming, but we weren’t able to get through with our arguments."
The general described the Bundeswehr as a once proud fighting force that was now hollowed out. After the end of the Cold War and the chaos of reunification, the Bundeswehr was shrunk so significantly that today, it can hardly fulfil its NATO obligations. The Defense Ministry doesn’t even want to war-game the horror scenario, according to which the Bundeswehr would have to defend Germany against an advancing Russian army. The result would be harrowing.
Should the Russians attack a NATO partner in the Baltics, for example, the plan consists of German forces delaying deployment until the U.S. sets its military machine in motion. There is no proviso for a scenario in which the cavalry from across the Atlantic doesn’t come.
In the 1990s, the Bundeswehr still had several thousand battle tanks in storage. Today, that number has dwindled to about 300. And it’s a similar story when it comes to tank and artillery munitions. A few thousand artillery rounds are on hand – enough for a maximum of one week should war break out.
Prior to the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the Bundeswehr possessed 12 high-tech Patriot air defense systems, capable of shooting down approaching missiles or warplanes. But several of them have been sent to Ukraine. And the rest, say military experts, would at most be sufficient to protect Germany’s most important munitions depots.
And perhaps the capital city of Berlin as well.
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