Two Eastern European allies have acknowledged they are engaged in preliminary talks regarding enhanced participation in NATO’s nuclear deterrence strategy, which relies on American nuclear assets stationed across Europe.
These early-stage conversations about broadening America’s nuclear deterrence capabilities in Europe could provide reassurance to continental partners about ongoing U.S. military commitment, particularly as President Donald Trump has pursued efforts to decrease his nation’s traditional defense presence in Europe.
“We are talking, in order to create better conditions for nuclear deterrence and for Poland to play an important role in that,” Polish Deputy Defense Minister Paweł Zalewski told Polish Radio on Wednesday.
However, Poland has rejected any intentions to house nuclear weapons directly. Such an arrangement would be “an extremely serious matter, which is serious in terms of political consequences,” he stated.
“Discussions are indeed taking place. I do not want to go into details at this point as they are classified, but discussions are ongoing, and Lithuania is certainly not standing on the sidelines,” Lithuanian Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said Tuesday, according to press agency BNS.
Both defense officials responded after unnamed sources told the Financial Times on Tuesday that America had indicated willingness to position components of its nuclear arsenal in additional European nations, beyond the six currently believed to accommodate nuclear weapons.
The Financial Times reported that Poland and the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the NATO members situated nearest to Ukraine, showed interest in possibly accommodating bases for U.S. dual-capable aircraft, which can deploy either conventional or nuclear warheads.
The Pentagon refused to provide comment, though a Defense Department official noted the U.S. and NATO “continuously assess the security environment” and work to maintain effective deterrents. The official lacked authorization for public statements and spoke anonymously.
America has positioned nuclear weapons across multiple European nations for decades as part of its security commitments to NATO partners.
In recent years, Russia’s conflict against Ukraine and the wider threat Moscow presents to NATO have sparked conversations about possibly expanding U.S. nuclear cooperation with Europe.
“Work to assess and potentially adapt NATO’s nuclear deterrence posture has been ongoing for several years and is not linked to any decision taken by the U.S. to adjust its conventional posture in Europe,” an official responsible for NATO communications but not authorized for public identification told the AP.
NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangement encompasses U.S. nuclear weapons positioned in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and Britain, along with dual-capable aircraft operated by both America and its partners. America retains complete authority over the nuclear weapons.
Poland has demonstrated readiness to join the U.S. nuclear deterrence initiative since Russia’s comprehensive invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, with former president Andrzej Duda even endorsing the accommodation of nuclear weapons. The present administration headed by Donald Tusk has shown greater restraint, discussing only expanded involvement in nuclear deterrence.
America, though, has consistently suggested that positioning nuclear weapons in NATO’s eastern member countries would prove overly provocative toward Russia, Artur Kacprzyk, a nuclear deterrence analyst with the Polish Institute of International Affairs in Warsaw, told the AP.
“There might be a middle ground there, which could be called ‘nuclear sharing light’. You would have, for example, Polish planes, certified for carrying U.S. nuclear weapons, but the weapons won’t be deployed in Poland. This aircraft from the east could be a sort of backup if, let’s say, German or Dutch aircraft are destroyed before they can use those nuclear weapons.”
Earlier this year, Poland announced it would join several European countries in supporting France’s initiative of coordinating its nuclear deterrence activities with European allies. France has remained the sole nuclear power within the European Union since Britain’s departure from the organization in 2020.
The French-led cooperation is “complementary” to U.S. deterrence, Kacprzyk noted, but it possesses a different character.
Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, Denmark and Norway also have expressed interest in the French initiative, which permits temporary deployment of France’s nuclear-armed aircraft to partner countries. It also enables partners to join France’s deterrence exercises and allows allies’ non-nuclear forces to participate in France’s nuclear operations.
Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz informed Polish broadcaster TVP on Tuesday that nuclear deterrence would be addressed during a NATO meeting in Brussels on June 18. He indicated both the French initiative and the U.S. program are components of those efforts.
Expanding nuclear cooperation in Europe might assist America in balancing conventional reductions but cannot completely replace the forward deployment of conventional forces, particularly in nations sharing borders with Russia, Kacprzyk stated.
“Communicating ‘I might risk nuclear war to defend an ally but I don’t want to send my soldiers into the fight’ is a conflicting signal,” he explained. “You need coherent signals at all levels of deterrence.”
