Nuclear deterrence: A bad bet for Europe

In a bombshell article, Professor Matthew Evangelista criticises western security policy makers for entrusting the fate of Ukrainian and European security to the whims of Vladimir Putin.

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The short version

• Nuclear deterrence has a credibility problem: Nato’s reliance on nuclear deterrence is fundamentally flawed. The strategy, based on the assumption that leaders like Putin will refrain from actions provoking nuclear retaliation, is unreliable and risks exposing the fragility of nuclear deterrence.

• Nuclear deterrence is an untested theory: The popular belief that nuclear weapons prevented war in Cold War Europe is wrong. Historical research suggests that the Soviet Union never intended the aggressive actions Nato feared, and that nuclear deterrence, rather than ensuring security, heightened the risk of inadvertent war, as illustrated by the 1961 Berlin crisis.

• Nuclear deterrence offers a false promise of security: By abandoning a flawed nuclear deterrence strategy, European states could prioritise alternative territorial defence strategies complemented by arrangements for civilian resistance in particularly exposed areas. These approaches offer a more credible, less dangerous, and ultimately more stable solution for European and Ukrainian security.

Click here to read Evangelista’s article in full. 

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The nuke bros in Brussels, Washington, London and Paris have been enjoying a heyday recently, after Russia’s President Vladimir Putin went to war against Ukraine and invited the nuclear-armed West to an all-or-nothing game of nuclear deterrence. 

In response to a long string of Russian threats to use nuclear weapons—including its most recent “tactical nuclear drill”—Nato has, over the past few years, scrambled to polish off their own weapons of doom, triggering an escalatory tit-for-tat that has brought the world closer to a nuclear war than at any time since the Cold War. 

Nato could have opted for a different response. In fact, at first it looked like the alliance's leaders might. During the first months of Russia’s invasion, Nato appeared taken aback—reluctant, it seemed, to respond in kind to Russia’s nuclear grandstanding.

“Any use of nuclear weapons is absolutely unacceptable,” Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of Nato said, in a surprisingly principled response to one of Putin’s thinly veiled threats in 2022. A few months earlier, an unusually reserved French foreign minister had merely reminded Putin that Nato “is a nuclear alliance” too. 

But as the war in Ukraine raged on, and Russia’s nuclear rhetoric became increasingly threatening, Nato changed tack. Instead of continuing to ostracise Putin for trying to escalate the war in Ukraine into a psychotic nuclear standoff—a principled stance that would likely have played well with non-western nuclear free countries—Nato launched a nuclear game of their own.

Nuclear weapons “are the supreme guarantee of our security,” Nato boasted to its 1,9 million Twitter/X followers in 2023 in a neatly presented carousel ad, seemingly unconcerned about the conclusions that the vast majority countries that have chosen not to go nuclear may draw from such a message.

In capitals across the alliance, nuclear advocates are now pushing for a nuclear build-up in Europe. Poland is “ready” to host nuclear weapons, the Polish President Andrzej Duda reiterated in April. Some have gone even further, calling for the development of a European bomb—dubbed a “eurodeterrent” in nukespeak. “The EU needs its own nuclear deterrent,” former foreign minister of Germany, Joschka Fischer —a member of the Greens, of all colours—said in December last year.

Nuclear deterrence: A credibility problem

The idea behind this outburst of nukelove? To scare, it would seem, Putin from pushing his imperialist agenda by signalling the alliance’s readiness to use nuclear weapons to protect its members. Here, but no further, seems to be Nato’s message to Putin. Otherwise the United States will blow you, itself—and the rest of the world—to ionised pieces. 

The strategy, known within the expert community as “extended nuclear deterrence,” is a remnant of the Cold War. The epitome of a haughty Atlanticist mindset, extended nuclear deterrence is symbolised most prominently by the covert “forward deployment” of U.S. nuclear weapons in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey. 

But for Matthew Evangelista, a professor in history and political science at Cornell University, Nato’s new nuclear posturing suffers from a fundamental credibility problem. Extended nuclear deterrence “stakes too much on the hope that Putin (or his successor) would refrain from actions that could provoke nuclear retaliation,” he writes in a recent article.   

The article, published in International Security—one of the world’s most prestigious journals in the field of international security—offers a stark warning to western security policy makers against applying the incorrect lessons of the Cold War to the current security situation in Europe, and ultimately harming Ukraine’s and Europe’s security interests. 

Would the United States really blow up the world for the sake of a distant ally? Hardly, seems to be Evangelista’s conclusion.  

“That Putin or anyone else might call NATO’s bluff and expose the fragility of nuclear deterrence should lead to a rethinking of reliance on such strategies,” he cautions. 

Nuclear deterrence: an untested theory   

Popular belief—heavily promoted by nuclear advocates—has it that nuclear weapons prevented the outbreak of major war in Europe during the Cold War. But the historical record, Evangelista argues, does not support this conclusion: nuclear deterrence was not tested in Cold War Europe, because the Soviet Union did not actually intend to invade Western Europe. 

According to Evangelista, western leaders were, at the time, themselves well aware of the shortcomings of extended nuclear deterrence. “The nuclear umbrella in NATO” was, he writes, citing the words of former U.S. President Richard Nixon, “a lot of crap”. If anything, the western cold warriors’ quest for a credible nuclear deterrent created enormous risks—as illustrated by the 1961 Berlin crisis—reducing European security overall. 

“What is known about nuclear weapons—from research into the Soviet archives, for example—is how much they heightened the danger of inadvertent war,” Evangelista writes. “That danger persists.” 

Nuclear deterrence: A false promise of security

Evangelista argues not only that extended nuclear deterrence is a bad bet for Nato’s member states. More pressingly, nuclear deterrence offers a “false promise” of security, he writes, for a future post-war Ukraine. Extended nuclear deterrence offers “no obvious way […] to prevent Russian encroachment on nearby territories, regardless of whether they are members of [Nato].”

Evangelista suggests that European countries, including Ukraine, scrap the game of nuclear deterrence in favour of a strategy of territorial defence. Such a strategy would include smaller, agile units and advanced weaponry capable of delaying and weakening potential invaders without appearing aggressive or threatening combined with “spider-in-the-web” tactics—a dispersed network of defensive units (the web) supported by mobile armoured units (the spider). In the most exposed areas, Evangelista argues, European countries should make arrangements for civilian resistance to counter hybrid threats and the potential appearance of Russian “green men.” 

In contrast to the untested theory of nuclear deterrence, these strategies appear to provide a reality-oriented and altogether more credible approach to European and Ukrainian security. If the war in Ukraine has taught us anything, it is that security requires an ability to physically defend one's territory, with soldiers, usable weapons, robust logistical support systems and an unwavering national resolve.

Extended nuclear deterrence has nothing to offer, in this respect, apart from an excuse to defer the required investments. An untested theory premised on the threat of collective suicide will not save Ukraine—nor Europe. If anything, Nato’s nuclear advocates, by promoting the merits of deterrence, are setting the own countries up for failure.

No level of nuclear signalling, advertising or build-up can correct for the fact that nuclear weapons are militarily useless for countries unwilling to blow up the world.