Robert C. Castel: European Nuclear Force an Illusion

We must answer fundamental questions before we start sharpening plutonium in our backyards.

French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in London (Photo: Christophe Ena / POOL / AFP)

Contemporary geopolitical and security analyses are typically written in the declarative mood, despite the fact that most of the claims would be better expressed in the conditional. Among moralizing "intellectuals," it is increasingly fashionable to write analyses in the imperative mood. This is the expanded version of Greta's "How dare you?!" and the speeches of Mr. Zelensky, complete with added factors for impact.

Breaking with these deep-rooted linguistic traditions, I will try to frame the following analysis in the interrogative mood. Why? Because, unlike the ideologues on this topic, I believe that 

when it comes to the issue of an independent European nuclear force, there are far more question marks than periods. To avoid any misunderstandings, let me state from the outset: I do not have good answers to most of my questions. Not even average ones. But I suspect the EU's leaders feel the same way. Tight-lipped determination and a hardened Kojak jaw do not, by themselves, constitute a strategy.

However, mapping out the questions can serve a useful purpose in understanding the complexity of the initiative and in marking the minefields along the path to achieving the goal.

So, let’s examine the most fundamental questions and obstacles that the EU's leadership must overcome in order for Europe to have its own "red button" after crossing the finish line.

1. Political and Strategic Questions

a) The question of national sovereignty

Few things provide more tangible evidence that a state takes its sovereignty seriously than the establishment of its own national nuclear option. Is it conceivable that - in a noble gesture - the French president would reclassify the persistently Gaullist French nuclear arsenal as "European"? Will member states be content with a federal nuclear umbrella of dubious reliability, or will they, like Sweden and West Germany before them, contemplate the idea of building a "private umbrella under the umbrella"?

b) Divergent national interests

Is it possible to develop a consensus-based EU nuclear strategy when the member states’ strategic priorities, security policy perceptions, and political visions regarding the role of nuclear deterrence differ so significantly?

Can such a strategy be crafted in an alliance where one pole is France, committed to the first use of nuclear weapons, and the other pole consists of the signatories of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) — Austria, Ireland, and Malta — who are in favor of banning nuclear weapons?

c) The limits of the NATO relationship

What consequences could such a European initiative have for NATO’s existing security mechanisms, nuclear-sharing agreements, and the maintenance of the U.S. nuclear umbrella? Will an independent European nuclear force be an alternative, offer a parallel solution, or will it function as a complement to the existing umbrella?

d) The lack of a unified political decision-making system

In the current state of the EU, is it possible to create a political decision-making mechanism that would allow for control over a nuclear force and the establishment of an integrated command structure?

2. Legal and contractual obstacles

a) The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

Given that the EU's current state ideology fetishizes international law, treaties, rules, and other paper-based constructs, is it possible to "square" this circle while acting against the spirit and letter of the NPT? Much like Iran, which is among the NPT signatories...

b) The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons  (TPNW) 

The aforementioned three EU member states signed the 2017 TPNW, which specifically opposes the maintenance and development of nuclear weapons. Will they withdraw from the treaty, as North Korea did in 2003?

c) Constitutional and legal barriers at the member state level

While the French Constitution does not explicitly address the question of nuclear weapons, its provisions on defense and national sovereignty implicitly designate the President of the Republic as the supreme commander of nuclear forces (see Articles 5, 15, and 16). These legal foundations underpin the laws, defense policies, and military doctrines that govern France’s national nuclear forces. How can this Gaullist-sovereignist legal framework be transformed into its own antithesis?

3. Military command and doctrinal challenges

a) Command and control structures

Beyond the issue of political decision-making mechanisms, there is also the question of military decision-making. For example, the issue of semi-automatic counterstrike mechanisms in the event that sensors assigned to this task detect a nuclear attack (e.g., Russia’s Perimeter system).

Is it conceivable that member states would place the key to their national survival in the hands of a military officer from another state or even an algorithm? Would a Baltic or Polish officer weigh the pros and cons of pressing the red button the same way his Irish or Portuguese colleague would?

b) The integration of existing nuclear srsenals

How could the integration of France's and potentially the UK’s nuclear arsenals into a common system be managed, and how would they be connected to an integrated European system, especially when we have seen in Ukraine that a NATO-standard grenade cannot be loaded into a NATO-standard gun?

c) Strategic cultures and nuclear doctrines

Nuclear doctrines are expressions of a nation’s strategic culture—"cast in plutonium."
European political culture is sharply divided on the use of peaceful nuclear energy — even on both sides of the French-German border.

The fault lines are even more pronounced on the issue of nuclear weapons. Given the existing ideological differences, is it possible to forge an EU consensus on nuclear doctrine?

Will the collective European stomach be able to digest the French "last warning" doctrine, which is based on the first use of nuclear weapons?

4. Economic and financial obstacles

a) High costs:

One paradox of nuclear weapons is that, measured in absolute kilotonnes, 

nuclear warheads are the cheapest explosive material in existence. In contrast, building the entire system—including delivery mechanisms, early warning systems, control, and defense infrastructure—is incredibly expensive.

How will an EU that's already struggling with serious economic challenges shoulder this burden? Is it possible to dramatically shift the EU's "butter and guns" balance towards the latter, and still maintain the bloc's promise of peace and prosperity?

b) Alternative costs (Opportunity Cost):

The range of national security threats facing Europe is vast, and as we learned during the first Cold War, it is very difficult to deter a terrorist or a guerrilla with nuclear weapons.
Will it be possible to finance a credible, layered deterrence strategy to face various levels of conventional, unconventional, and hybrid threats in a way that the package also includes deterrence against 6,000 Russian nuclear warheads?

5. Public opinion and democratic legitimacy

a) Long-term legitimacy: building an independent European nuclear force would require a long-term commitment.

The two superpowers and France took approximately six years to go from the first shovel in the ground to the first atomic flash. For other nuclear powers, this process took a decade. The question is: will the European Union be able to secure public support and the indispensable democratic legitimacy to carry out such a dramatic shift in policy over the long term?

Conclusion

These are just a few of the questions worth asking before we begin sharpening plutonium in our backyards in Europe. We have not, for instance, considered how

a nuclear European Union would affect the global nuclear balance: would it increase or decrease the stability of the international system? How would such a change reshape relations between the U.S., China, and Russia with the European Union?

We've also left the question of deterrence - in the context of a Europe with its own nuclear force - unaddressed. There is an extensive body of literature on this subject, and game theory-based analyses have reached rather surprising and counterintuitive conclusions.

But more on this in next week’s analysis.

The author is a security policy expert at the Center for Fundamental Rights and a senior correspondent for our newspaper.