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Building up a nuclear deterrent from scratch is no easy feat, but with the US distancing itself from Europe, the idea has started to resurface.
ADVERTISEMENT“Poland must pursue the most advanced capabilities, including nuclear and modern unconventional weapons,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told his country’s parliament earlier this month. “This is a serious race — a race for security, not for war.”Coming as the Trump administration signalled it is essentially pulling back from protecting Europe, Tusk’s statement seemed to suggest a potential lurch toward nuclear weapons proliferation in Europe — something at odds with decades of European policy.While questions remain over the US’ ongoing commitment to its role as Europe’s nuclear security guarantor, China is expanding its nuclear arsenal. And Russia, which maintains the world’s largest stockpile of warheads, repeatedly invokes the threat of using them to warn NATO and the EU against getting directly militarily involved in Ukraine.The overall picture raises two difficult questions. How can Europe maintain a continent-wide nuclear deterrent? And is there a possibility that other countries will join the nuclear club?Although some European states have some of the elements required to develop independent nuclear weapons capability, experts say the chances of another European state going nuclear are slim.Starting from scratchAccording to Fabian Rene Hoffmann, a research fellow at the Oslo Nuclear Project, even if one of Europe’s NATO powers were keen to develop its own nuclear weapons rather than simply hosting them, it would find itself at a standing start. “The major issue European countries are facing is that they either don’t deploy the civilian nuclear infrastructure to launch a nuclear weapons programme, or, if they have civilian nuclear infrastructure, that it is highly ‘proliferation-resistant’,” he told Euronews.“For example, Finland and Sweden only have light-water reactors, which are not suitable for the production of weapons-grade plutonium. In addition, neither of those countries have chemical reprocessing plants that are needed for separating wanted from unwanted isotopes in fissile material production.””So even if they wanted to launch a nuclear program, they couldn’t do so with their existing infrastructure, at least in the short-term. That’s the case for all non-nuclear weapon states in Europe with a civilian nuclear programme right now.”Hoffman acknowledged one arguable exception: Germany.“While it does not deploy significant civilian nuclear infrastructure anymore, it has a large stockpile of highly-enriched uranium for research purposes,” he explained. “Theoretically, this stockpile could be repurposed under some effort to create weapons-grade fissile material.”“But even then it would only be enough for around 5 to 15 nuclear warheads, so it would not be enough to deploy what we call a “robust” nuclear deterrent.” Opening the umbrellaBoth of Europe’s nuclear-armed powers, the UK and France, have big decisions to make about their nuclear futures.As things stand, the UK’s limited submarine-based deterrent is facing an uncertain future. The fleet used to carry its missiles is ageing and set to be replaced, and more pressingly still, the missiles themselves are made and stockpiled at a US base, meaning the British deterrent is unusually reliant on the participation of another state.France’s deterrent, by contrast, is larger and more independent of NATO, and is not confined to submarines. That means it could potentially be “forward-deployed” elsewhere in Europe — but as Hoffman explained, this is not as simple an idea as it sounds.ADVERTISEMENT“Infrastructure would have to be built up in the hosting states, most notably bunkers,” he told Euronews. “I would also say that forward-deploying French nuclear weapons in Germany wouldn’t really make any difference. If at all, they should be forward-deployed to the frontline states” — that is, Russia-facing countries including Poland. His comments come after Poland said it would like US nuclear warheads to be deployed on Polish soil. Out of the shadowsAfter the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Warsaw Pact, Poland was rid of the Soviet nuclear weapons that had been stationed on its territory. Like most European countries, it has since signed up to various international agreements to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, including the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.Were Poland or another European state to start developing its own nuclear weapons, it would be abandoning a norm that has held sway in the West for three decades.ADVERTISEMENTThe highly developed global nuclear non-proliferation regime has long been focused on curtailing the North Korean weapons programme, heading off weapons-grade enrichment in Iran, and preventing uncontrolled international flows of uranium, plutonium, and the components needed to enrich enough of either to create a viable nuclear device.The prospect of a European state developing weapons itself has not been bargained for — but that does not mean an aspiring proliferator would be able to do so under the radar.“None of the European non-nuclear weapon states would likely be able to secretly proliferate,” Hoffman said. “Just like anywhere else in the world, nuclear infrastructure and nuclear-related assets in Europe are under the strict safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency, meaning any diversions would most likely be noticed.”That said, the global agencies and monitors tasked with non-proliferation work are being forced to keep up with new technologies that threaten to make illicit proliferation easier. ADVERTISEMENTGoing nuclear on the cheapParticularly concerning is additive manufacturing, or 3D printing. The US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies has warned that it could help “create volatile pathways to nuclear capabilities and weapons”, with wannabe proliferators potentially able to evade the usual scrutiny by printing hard-to-import components at home.So far, the international nonproliferation effort has largely focused on making it as hard as possible for a country “going rogue” to develop a weapon — and in a world of 3D printing, artificial intelligence and other rapidly developing technologies, the means by which countries are stopped from proliferating on an illicit basis may have to change.One historic example looms large here. In the mid-20th century, Apartheid South Africa began testing nuclear devices, ultimately producing six warheads that could theoretically be fitted to intercontinental ballistic missiles.Crucially, the country enriched its own weapons-grade uranium with a method called the Helikon vortex separation process, an energy-intensive but relatively cheap method that some experts worry could be used to enrich at least a small quantity of fissile uranium today.ADVERTISEMENTSouth Africa so far remains the only state in history to have both developed its own nuclear weapons and given them up, abandoning its deterrent and ballistic missile programmes as Apartheid and the Cold War came to an end.But the story of its low-cost proliferation effort is testament to the fact that even with intense international scrutiny of vital dual-use components and radioactive materials, a state determined enough to build a nuclear deterrent could theoretically find a way to do it at home.Whether any of today’s European nations would take such a radical step, potentially putting themselves in the same club as North Korea, is another matter — but the behaviour of the US and Russia in the near future may yet be the determining factor.
