Europe targets homegrown nuclear deterrent as Trump sides with Putin

Politico ^ | 2/21/25 | TIM ROSS, LAURA KAYALI AND NETTE NÖSTLINGER

[hardspunned]

Germany’s Merz says Britain and France may need to “share” their nuclear weapons as America can’t be relied on to defend NATO.

Europe's politicians are openly discussing how they could tackle the threat of nuclear attack without American help, in a dramatic sign of the deep crisis engulfing the transatlantic alliance under Donald Trump. In what would be a huge shift in position, the runaway favorite to be Germany’s next leader said the continent must find new ways to defend itself without the U.S. military underpinning its nuclear protection through NATO. Friedrich Merz, whom polls suggest is on course to become chancellor after Sunday’s German elections, said his country would need to look beyond the U.S. to Britain and France for nuclear safeguards. Under Trump, he said, America could no longer be relied on.

[hardspunned]

Now the Germans are trying to crowd themselves under the French nuclear umbrella. The only good NATO has done since 2000 has been keeping the Euroweenies from each other’s throat. Germany will have its own nukes within five years.

de Gaulle was right. I don’t think any U.S. president would have made the conscious decision to start a nuclear war to save Berlin or Paris (the dementia patient was beyond conscious decisions when he nearly started WWIII over Donbas).

[Right_Wing_Madman]

Now the Germans are trying to crowd themselves under the French nuclear umbrella.

Nukes will be useless against the Islamic armies forming inside Britain, France, and Germany, unless they're willing to nuke their own cities.

[hardspunned]

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Brest in the Bay of Biscay, a fascist, woke iron curtain has descended across the continent”

[MMusson]

If the Germans had not shut down their nuclear reactors, they would have a good source of plutonium. You can’t make nuclear weapons with windmills.

[nathanbedford]

If Trump's purpose was to reform NATO, he has failed miserably, so far.

If Trump's purpose was to disunite NATO, he is succeeding wonderfully, so far.

If conservatives believe that we are safer with NATO in disarray and even with America withdrawn, then you must believe that America is safer in an isolated, defensive posture that in no way preserves its existence except by nuclear deterrence or, God forbid, nuclear war.

If we think that America is safer as a citadel behind two oceans that dominates the West from Greenland to the Panama Canal, we should be unsettled by the fact that we have very short memories.

Our memories evidently do not extend to the precarious state of our national security in the isolationist days leading up to Pearl Harbor.

Our memories evidently do not extend to more recent time when we came to within an ace of being incinerated in the Cuban missile crisis.

Our memories evidently do not extend to an even more recent time when we were nearly incinerated by a bizarre misjudgment of the Soviet Navy that only by the narrowest chance was aborted from launching nuclear attack on the United States by a loan Soviet officer.

To his credit, Donald Trump clearly remembers these things and is determined to act prudently. Beyond steps listed above he seeks to end the Ukraine war. More than merely achieving a cease-fire, his imagination goes beyond that to the reintegration of Russia into the list a civilized nations. I hope he succeeds. But at the cost of NATO? At the cost of Europe? Even if he succeeds now in bringing Russia to a civilized condition, Trump has only 3+ years left to monitor things, after that? The deluge? Who will manage China? Can we do so from citadel America?

At this moment and for the foreseeable future Russia is a demoralized, corrupt and a week conventional military force. Putin's economy has been concentrated into war production threatening to crash the entire Russian economy. His days of distorting the economy and consigning untold young Russian men to death and dismemberment are coming to a close, and Putin himself must certainly recognize the threat to his power and, indeed, to his life.

Therefore, Russia poses no realistic conventional threat to any other NATO country for many years. But Russia remains perhaps the world's most powerful nuclear threat with China hard on its heels.

Let's go back down memory lane one more time. Do you recall 1980s when millions of Europeans (and not a few leftist Americans) filled the streets, especially the streets of Germany, in protest against President Reagan's installation of missiles in Europe?

In the four decades since, both Europe and America have changed the very essence of their identity with unbridled immigration of alien cultures and worldviews reinforcing a general drift leftward resulting in engrossing power of the state at the expense of essential human rights of the kind expressed in our Bill of Rights. In short, Europe and America under the influence of the 1619 movement, under the influence of woke madness and distorted by alien immigration, are even less likely to muster the grit to face up to Pearl Harbor or to another Cuban missile crisis.

China will not conquer America by sending its Marines to storm the beaches of San Diego, rather it's tentacles will remorselessly constrict closer and closer to our citadel until threat of nuclear annihilation causes our own demoralized civil populace to demand peace at any price.

They will be able to say that we have no allies in the world. They will be able to say we have no trade partners so our economy has shrunk, they will be able to say that we have no affinity either culturally, philosophically or militarily with Europe. They will say the whole world is against us, we are alone and, besides, our system is not worth defending.

China will not conquer us, it will simply absorb us.

But we will surely have taught those euro weenies a lesson they won't forget.

[bert]

The best and certain nuclear deterrent is to destroy Russia economically and then don’t go back with the businesses that fled

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

Germany and the EU can f off. Not after the way they treated us after Brexit.

[buwaya]

You’ve seen nothing yet. You will have a Polish nuclear umbrella before too long, and a Japanese and Korean one, and Australian, and who knows what else.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

Poland should devolop it’s own nukes. Strategic and tactical. The selling out of Ukraine despite the Budapest memorandum shows that non proliferation is dead.

[BobL]

No one is telling Germany that they need to leave NATO, as the most the US can do is pull ourselves out of NATO. But NATO will still be there in Europe, with it’s dying countries likely going Islamist.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

And this why Trump is making a huge strategic mistake shafting Ukraine and telling the rest of the world to go and f itself when it comes to defence against local bullies. Countries near aggressive neighbours that cannot rely on powerful allies but don’t have the population size or economy to deter conventionally need nukes.

[BobL]

“The best and certain nuclear deterrent is to destroy Russia economically and then don’t go back with the businesses that fled”

Well, we found out over the past 3 years that it’s not so easy to destroy Russia economically, but we did get a consolation prize, destroying Europe economically.

And we will be destroying Russia in the future, not as long as China refuses to help us.

[bert]

No, we learned just the opposite. Mother Russia has fallen on her economic ass. The Russian economy is presently beyond hope of recovery. Mother Russia is beyond flat broke

[BobL]

“No, we learned just the opposite. Mother Russia has fallen on her economic ass.”

Oh, ok. I guess people here can decide whether to believe you guys, or believe the WORLD BANK, from LAST YEAR.

Russia now a HIGH INCOME country.

https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/leadership/directors/eds23/brief/russia-was-classified-as-high-income-country

[JoSixChip]

LOL! In all the threads I’ve seen you post in over the years; you have never once been right. You have been on the wrong side of every argument you have ever been involved in. Too bad there isn’t a tool on this site where you could just go back to the post between you and me, it’s some of my best work.

[TexasFreeper2009]

the socialist countries of Europe will soon start to fall if they are no longer being propped up by American taxpayers.

Socialism always fails, it has only appeared to “sort of” work in parts of Europe because of this.

[hardspunned]

His goal is to get us out of NATO! Go, Mr. President, Go!

[hardspunned]

You really need to be working with a rim shot. Funny stuff though. Your ideas are the same as the dementia patient’s. What’s your excuse?

[Redmen4ever]

Increasing numbers of people are figuring it out. We, the U.S., had (and still have) an interest in our being the leader of the free world. Germany is just the first of many countries that will nuke up in response to the U.S. becoming an unreliable ally.

[hardspunned]

No doubt. Wait until they start using them in each other. If anyone needs a nuke, it’s Poland! The Japanese are fools for not having one today.

De Gaulle knew the score!

“The decision to arm France with nuclear weapons was made in 1954 by the administration of Pierre Mendès France under the Fourth Republic. President Charles de Gaulle, upon his return to power in 1958, solidified the initial vision into the well-defined concept of a fully independent Force de frappe that would be capable of protecting France from a Soviet or other foreign attack and independent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which de Gaulle considered to be too dominated by the United States. In particular, France was concerned that in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, the US, already bogged down in the Korean War and afraid of Soviet retaliation against the United States, would not come to the aid of its allies in Western Europe. De Gaulle felt that France should never entrust its defense and therefore its very existence to a foreign and thus unreliable protector.“