The White House has been talking about reducing America's military presence across the European continent, amid long-running Trump complaints over lack of NATO burden-sharing. There are even plans to draw down 5,000 US troops from Germany on a permanent basis (though for now it appears thousands are just being moved to Poland).
Such a military 'reduction' would be welcomed by Moscow, however, as is usual when Washington signals de-escalation in force posture, the result ends up being the opposite. Washington is reportedly preparing to scatter more nuclear tripwires across the European continent, all while claiming a draw down of forces and footprint.
According to a Financial Times report published Tuesday, the US is actively discussing whether to deploy nuclear weapons in more NATO states.
Citing three people briefed on the internal discussions, American officials have signaled distinct openness to additional deployments well beyond the six nations that currently host the Pentagon's nuclear-capable bombers.
Under NATO’s legacy nuclear sharing program, only six allies including Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, and the United Kingdom - are approved to host US supplied dual-capable aircraft and "forward-deployed" nuclear bombs.
And yet that exclusive club may be about to get a lot larger, and even closer to Moscow's doorstep. Unsurprisingly, the nations highest on the list are located along NATO's eastern flank, with Poland and various Baltic states already aggressively expressing interest in hosting the bases required to house the aircraft.
But as even Ukrainian media points out, this violates prior high level agreements between the Western alliance and Moscow:
The 1997 NATO-Russia agreement said NATO had no plans to place nuclear weapons in new member states. However, some countries that joined NATO later, including Poland, have since said they would be open to hosting US nuclear weapons, especially after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The FT report suggests that while an agreement to expand nuclear hosting is not imminent, high-level discussions are happening at the highest levels of NATO.
The proposal seems to be Washington's carrot offered alongside the 'stick' of renewed financial arm-twisting over lack of European defense spending.
As we featured last week, some recent reports have dubbed the new vision for European defense as "NATO 3.0" - wherein Washington would expect European allies to assume responsibility for the continent’s entire conventional defense, and the nuclear arsenal would be maintained by the United States. Lately France's Macron has introduced the possibility of a French nuclear umbrella, apparently as an alterantive.