Paper
George Perkovich
{
"authors": [
"George Perkovich"
],
"type": "other",
"centerAffiliationAll": "dc",
"centers": [
"Carnegie Endowment for International Peace",
"Carnegie Europe",
"Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center"
],
"collections": [
"Transatlantic Cooperation",
"U.S. Nuclear Policy"
],
"englishNewsletterAll": "ctw",
"nonEnglishNewsletterAll": "",
"primaryCenter": "Carnegie Endowment for International Peace",
"programAffiliation": "NPP",
"programs": [
"Nuclear Policy"
],
"projects": [],
"regions": [
"North America",
"United States",
"Eastern Europe",
"Western Europe",
"Germany",
"Europe"
],
"topics": [
"Nuclear Policy"
]
}
Source: Getty
Other
Nuclear Weapons in Germany: Broaden and Deepen the Debate
Recent arguments against a withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons from Germany are based on anachronistic perceptions regarding NATO’s nuclear weapons capacity, but bring up important points concerning broader implications for nuclear disarmament.
Published on Feb 17, 2010
The London-based Centre for European Reform released a brief last week by Franklin Miller, George Robertson, and Kori Schake criticizing the new German government for proposing the withdrawal of all U.S. nuclear weapons from Germany. The authors’ international standing makes their essay worthy of debate. A new paper by George Perkovich analyzes their main arguments.
Key Conclusions
- U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe are often deemed critical for the defense of NATO’s territory, but the bombs are antiquated and operationally unnecessary. What really matters for U.S. and NATO security are reliable commitments to collective defense, the capability to deter today’s threats, and better relations between NATO and Russia
- No state—including Germany and the United States—should unilaterally revise NATO’s deterrence strategies, but it will equally debilitate the alliance if states cling to an outmoded nuclear posture.
- NATO should take special care to reassure Turkey and Eastern European states that it will deploy the capabilities best suited to deter Iranian and Russian coercion. This will likely involve political subversion, asymmetric low-intensity violence, cyber-harassment, and energy-supply blackmail, rather than nuclear weapons.
- Redefining a secure, defensive balance of conventional forces between NATO and Russia is a complicated challenge and almost no high-level leadership has been devoted to the issue. There is no chance to reduce or eliminate tactical nuclear weapons in NATO and Russia without addressing the overall military-security relationship between them.
“Thinking in terms of nuclear deterrence, and especially in terms of bombs on German soil, obscures the broader challenge of reinvigorating NATO and extending deterrence against lower-scale threats,” writes Perkovich. “The moral hazard in Europe today is not in taking useless tactical nuclear weapons out, it is in pretending that they can protect allies from twenty-first century threats and doing too little in the meantime to develop capabilities and diplomatic strategies to deny those threats.”
About the Author
George Perkovich
Japan Chair for a World Without Nuclear Weapons, Senior Fellow
George Perkovich is the Japan Chair for a World Without Nuclear Weapons and a senior fellow in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Nuclear Policy Program. He works primarily on nuclear deterrence, nonproliferation, and disarmament issues, and is leading a study on nuclear signaling in the 21st century.
- How to Assess Nuclear ‘Threats’ in the Twenty-First Century
- “A House of Dynamite” Shows Why No Leader Should Have a Nuclear TriggerCommentary
George Perkovich
Recent Work
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
More Work from Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center
- What Should We Take From Andrey Melnichenko’s Essay in the Economist?Commentary
Andrey Melnichenko’s essay offers no answer to the fundamental question of how, under any kind of negotiated settlement, Europe can protect itself from the Russian ressentiment that is inevitable in all scenarios except for an outright victory for Putin.
Leonid Bershidsky
- Moldova’s Ruling Party PAS Must Graduate From Crisis Management to State GovernanceCommentary
Whether PAS can refocus on the unfinished business of state-building may ultimately prove more consequential for Moldova’s European future than the pace of its accession negotiations.
Balázs Jarábik
- Simmering U.S.-Iran Conflict Is Moscow’s Ideal OutcomeCommentary
Ongoing uncertainty in the Middle East allows Moscow to both increase its influence in Tehran and continue to enjoy the financial windfall of higher oil prices.
Nikita Smagin
- Brussels and Baku Are Talking Again: What Next?Commentary
Azerbaijan’s relations with the EU appear to be going from strength to strength after several years in the deep freeze following the military escalation in Karabakh in 2023 and Azerbaijan’s bitter fallout with France and several other EU member states.
Shujaat Ahmadzada
- As Trump Threatens to Quit NATO, the Baltic States Are Playing for TimeCommentary
Governments in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania want to ensure that a U.S. military withdrawal would not leave them dangerously exposed to a Russian attack.
Sergejs Potapkins
