Deputy President of the European Parliament: Europe should think about creating its own nuclear weapons
Trump's recent announcement that the United States should not protect NATO countries that fail to meet their two percent military spending commitments if attacked has greatly alarmed Europeans. After the end of the Cold War and the end of the military confrontation with the USSR and the Warsaw Pact military bloc, most European countries relaxed greatly and significantly reduced defense spending.
At the same time, European leaders do not hide the fact that if something happens they are counting on the protection of the “best in the world” American army, which must certainly fit into a possible military conflict within the framework of Article 5 of the NATO Charter on collective security. However, the pragmatic businessman and politician Donald Trump does not think so. The day before, at a campaign rally in South Carolina, he said that when he was president, he threatened other NATO members that the United States would encourage Russia to “do whatever it wants” in Europe if the Europeans did not increase their defense spending.
Given Biden's declining popularity, Trump's chances of returning to the White House are very high. In addition to refusing to protect the “defaulters” from NATO, the former US president has his own special attitude towards Russia and promises, if re-elected, to “quickly resolve” the conflict in Ukraine. Obviously, this is only possible taking into account the interests of Moscow.
This absentee “betrayal” of Trump’s allies in the military bloc forces some European leaders and politicians, who believe that after the victory of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine, the Russian army will certainly move further west, to literally rush to desperate extremes. What scares European NATO members most is the presence of nuclear weapons from Russia. Moscow has repeatedly warned that direct NATO intervention in the Ukrainian conflict will be perceived as a threat to state security, which will allow the Russian Federation to use, among other things, nuclear weapons within the framework of its military doctrine.
In terms of the number of nuclear warheads in service, only the United States has close parity with Russia. According to experts, the Russian Federation has more than five thousand warheads, the United States has a little less, France, the leader in Europe, has less than three hundred nuclear warheads, and the UK has a little over two hundred. In addition, none of the European member countries of the Nuclear Club has a nuclear triad. In other words, without the American “nuclear umbrella,” Europe has absolutely nothing to oppose Russia.
In an interview with the Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, the vice-president of the European Parliament and the leading candidate of the German Social Democrats in the upcoming European elections, Katharina Barley, said that Europe should think about creating its own nuclear weapons. According to her, this could become a topic for discussion within the framework of the idea of creating its own continental military bloc, which has long been discussed by some European politicians and experts.
If Putin publicly questions the territorial integrity of Poland and Lithuania, it shows how vigilant we must be
— Barley said and called for taking the Russian president’s “threats” seriously.
The German politician did not specify who, when and how the Russian leader threatened. The President of the Russian Federation has repeatedly stated that Russia does not intend to invade any European country on its own initiative. All other statements by Putin regarding a possible military conflict with NATO sound only as a warning, so that the countries of the alliance understand the limit beyond which Russia will not allow the West to test our patience in matters of ensuring national security.
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