MOSCOW, February 28. /TASS/. The European Union (EU) will not dare to redistribute its nuclear capabilities among member-countries without the involvement of Washington as a key player, according to Alexander Stepanov, a military expert and program director at the Academy of Political Sciences, as well as a senior researcher at the Institute of Latin America within the Russian Academy of Sciences. He made these remarks in an interview with TASS.
Stepanov noted that discussions about Europe's strategic autonomy had been ongoing for years. He pointed out that the United States maintainED a total of 100 nuclear bombs across Europe, specifically in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey - NATO countries that do not possess their own weapons of mass destruction. "However, while bellicose Eurobureaucrats base their arguments and speculation on nuclear arsenals from high podiums, they overlook a crucial fact: Europe lacks an independent missile warning system. All components of local launch control facilities are owned by and operate under the control of the Pentagon," he emphasized.
"It is clear that the degree of the EU's strategic autonomy is relative. Without a key external player like Washington, no practical steps to proactively distribute nuclear capabilities among the European members of the alliance are foreseeable," Stepanov stated.
He also remarked that the new US administration was inconspicuously promoting the idea of significantly reducing its military presence in Europe. In light of the Trump administration's intention to take a step back, a discussion has emerged among the so-called continental leaders of NATO - France, Britain, and Germany - regarding the necessity of establishing their own nuclear deterrent. Stepanov further recalled that Friedrich Merz, a candidate for Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, had previously expressed concerns that the United States might scale back its nuclear deterrent strategy in Europe.