Can Europe still count on America’s nuclear umbrella?
When President John F. Kennedy met his French counterpart during the Berlin crisis of 1961, he found himself having to offer reassurances. With Moscow demanding that NATO withdraw its forces from the divided city, President Charles de Gaulle cast doubt on America’s determination to protect Europe.
If Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev dispatched his armies across the continent, de Gaulle wondered, would the U.S. really be willing to sacrifice New York in a nuclear exchange to defend Paris? “If the General himself, who has worked with the United States for so long, could question American firmness, Mr. Khrushchev can question it also," Kennedy replied, according to notes of the meeting.
In the end, the U.S. and allies rejected the ultimatum, Moscow blinked first, and West Berlin remained free. This existential dilemma of extended deterrence—would a nuclear power risk the annihilation of its own homeland to defend a faraway ally?—has been at the core of geopolitics since Washington first extended its nuclear umbrella to Europe as the NATO alliance emerged in 1949.
No matter how much the Soviets publicly doubted America’s will, they never tested it. Now, as Ukraine is engulfed in Europe’s bloodiest war in nearly eight decades and Russian President Vladimir Putin regularly issues thinly veiled nuclear threats, the question once posed by de Gaulle burns again in the minds of America’s allies—and adversaries. Would an American president, especially a re-elected Donald Trump, be willing to risk nuclear war for Helsinki, Tallinn or Warsaw? And if not, could Europe’s own two nuclear powers—France and, to a lesser extent, the U.
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