‘Dr. Strangelove’ Redux? Europe Learns To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Germany, joining France and Britain, is constructing, independent of America, a European nuclear deterrent to Russia. The move has broad popular support, silencing the No-Nukes movement of the Cold War as the continent learns — like the tagline of the 1964 dark comedy, “Dr. Strangelove” — “to stop worrying and love the bomb.”Speaking to the Bundestag on January 29, Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced that he’s talking with Great Britain and France about developing a continental nuclear umbrella. He foresaw no obstacle from treaties limiting Berlin’s access to the weapons or the anti-nuclear movement.Germany signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1969. As a condition of the country’s reunification in 1990, it also signed the Two Plus Four Treaty to renounce producing, possessing, or controlling weapons of mass destruction — including atomic weapons.Yet Mr. Merz argued that those obligations don’t prevent Berlin from discussing building a deterrent with its allies. France and Great Britain, Europe’s only members of the Nuclear Club, agreed to form the continent’s first atomic pact in July.Peter Sellers in a still from Stanley Kubrick’s film, ‘Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’. Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesThe prime minister of Britain, Sir Keir Starmer, said in a statement that his nation and France “share responsibility for the continent’s defense and security.” He added that “our adversaries will know that any extreme threat to this continent would prompt a response from our two nations.”The move, once thought to be radioactive in European politics, is a response to President Trump pushing allies to carry more of the defense burden. “These talks are taking place,” Mr. Merz told the Bundestag, with that goal in mind, but “are not in conflict with nuclear sharing with the United States of America.”The head of the Bundestag’s defense committee, Thomas Rowekamp, told Welt TV two weeks ago that Germany does “not have missiles or warheads.” Europe’s largest economy does, however, “have a significant technological advantage that we could contribute to a joint European initiative.”Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 changed public opinion. An Infratest Dimap survey in June 2022 found that 52 percent of Germans approved of American nukes on their soil — the first time the question had majority support. A Forsa poll last June found 64 percent across ages, regions, and parties support a European nuclear option.Slim Pickens as Major Kong in the film ‘Dr. Strangelove.’ Via YouTubeTwo years ago, when America announced plans to station its long-range missiles in Germany, resistance came only from Die Linke or “the Left” Party. In the former provinces of communist East Germany, the arguments were a whisper of Cold War concerns about increasing the likelihood of nuclear war.Yet the Social Democrats, Greens, and Liberals who formed Germany’s governing coalition renewed the country’s commitment to nuclear sharing. They also committed to replacing their outdated fleet of Panavia Tornado aircraft, tasked with delivering American nuclear bombs, with cutting-edge Lockheed F-35 fighters. The emerging European framework is proceeding without the outcry that marked Cold War efforts to position elements of America’s nuclear triad with our allies in the North Atlantic Treaty. In the 1980s, hundreds of thousands in what was then West Germany marched against housing American Pershing II missiles. That opposition undermined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Double-Track Decision. The strategy aimed to use the threat of the Pershings to pressure the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact to limit its deployment of SS-20 Pioneers, each armed with three “independently targetable” warheads.President Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate, West Berlin, on June 12, 1987. Via Wikimedia CommonsThe Euromissile Crisis standoff began in 1977 and dragged on thanks to those who saw matching the Kremlin’s atomic might as an escalation. President Reagan’s policy of peace through strength prevailed, leading to 1987’s Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.In that treaty, America and the Soviets agreed to dismantle all their ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles in Europe. It was the first agreement to eliminate an entire class of such weapons — the solution the No-Nukes campaigners advocated but made more difficult by demanding unilateral disarmament.“If you would have peace,” a Roman author, Vegetius, wrote, “prepare for war.” Germany, once part of the Holy Roman Empire, is now putting that advice into action. Even opponents of nuclear weapons are learning — if not quite to love the bomb — to embrace the paradox that having them is the best way to ensure they’re never used.

‘Dr. Strangelove’ Redux? Europe Learns To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

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