Germans Debate the Once-Unthinkable: Do We Need Nuclear Weapons?
BERLIN—Russian expansionism and fears about American disengagement from Europe are causing such alarm here that Germany is beginning to ponder a question once considered unthinkable: Does it need to have its own nuclear weapons? In recent weeks, German officials have called on France and the U.K.—Europe’s two nuclear powers—to work with Berlin to develop a fallback plan for nuclear deterrence for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, should the U.S. no longer be willing to fulfill that role.
Some politicians and academics are going even further, asking whether Germany could someday need its own atomic arsenal. Germany isn’t the only country where policymakers are contemplating the consequences of proliferation, as some established nuclear powers expand their arsenals, new members join the atomic club and others, such as Iran, appear to be taking steps in that direction.
But in Germany, which has embraced pacifism since its World War II defeat, and has renounced both nuclear energy and the atomic bomb, the debate is especially fraught. The discussion burst into public view earlier this month when the finance minister, Christian Lindner, reacted to comments from U.S.
presidential candidate Donald Trump indicating that if he is re-elected Washington wouldn’t come to the aid of NATO allies who weren’t spending enough on defense. In an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Lindner asked: “Under which political and financial conditions would Paris and London be willing to maintain and expand their own strategic capacities for our collective security? And conversely, how much are we ready to contribute?" Other politicians, including Friedrich Merz, leader of Germany’s largest opposition party, the conservative CDU,
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