Trump's NATO threat has a nervous Europe talking of defending itself with nukes

The type of Russian tactical nuclear weapon recently deployed in Belarus

It’s not as strange as it sounds.  NATO nations, including those in Eastern Europe sharing a border with Russia, have depleted their weapons stockpiles sending ammunition, artillery, tanks and other hardware to Ukraine to help that beleaguered country defend itself against Russia. 

With Donald Trump threatening if elected not to defend any NATO ally that doesn’t meet its obligation to spend two percent of GDP on defense, what are European countries supposed to do to defend themselves?  The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that Russia plans to double its military presence along the borders it has with the Baltic states of Estonia, Finland, and Latvia.  “Russians are planning to increase the military force along the Baltic states’ border but also the Finnish border,” said Kaupo Rosin, director-general of Estonia’s foreign intelligence service this week, ahead of the annual Munich Security Conference that begins tomorrow.  “We will highly likely see an increase of manpower, about doubling, perhaps. We will see an increase in armed personnel carriers, tanks, artillery systems over the coming years.”

Polish President Andrzej Duda confirmed last August a statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia had moved some of its tactical nuclear weapons into Belarus in July.  Tactical nuclear weapons are so-called “battlefield” short-range nukes intended for use during ground warfare.  Duda said the Russian move “is changing the architecture of security in our immediate neighborhood, but also of the eastern flank of NATO, at the same time. So, in fact it is changing the situation for all of the alliance.”

And this was before Trump’s threat that if he is elected, he will pull the United States out of its obligations under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, if not completely out of NATO itself.

The Federation of American Scientists estimates that Russia has as many as 1,900 nuclear-armed short-range rockets, cruise missiles, and bombs that can be carried by various Russian-produced fighter jets.  The movement of such weapons into a nation like Belarus that has borders with Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine is a blatant act of aggression.

The United States had short and medium-range nuclear weapons stationed in Europe until the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) was signed in 1988.  Three years later, 2,692 intermediate ground-based missiles had been eliminated in Europe.  The treaty did not apply to air and sea launched nuclear missiles.

Trump announced in 2018 that the U.S. was suspending its compliance with the INF Treaty and made the move official on February 1, 2019.  Russia followed suit the following day.  The U.S. formally withdrew from the INF Treaty on August 2, 2019.

That was only five years ago.  As part of its threat to increase Russian military presence along its border with Europe, Russia could be moving short and medium-range nuclear weapons all over the place, especially now that Finland has been formally inducted into the NATO alliance.

Then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly called then President Trump a “moron” in July of 2017 after his first meeting with national security officials at the Pentagon, when Trump asked if the U.S. could increase its nuclear stockpile “tenfold.”  Trump had just been shown a briefing slide outlining how much U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles had been reduced since the 1960’s by the START Treaty. Less than a year later, Trump announced we were pulling out of the INF Treaty that ended the presence of short and medium range nukes in Europe.

The Russian threat to increase the number of its troops along its border with Baltic states is frighteningly reminiscent of the moves Russia made along its border with Ukraine in 2021 before it invaded in February of 2022.  It is an understatement to say that as the Munich Security Conference opens tomorrow, nerves are stretched tight everywhere in Europe, but especially in the countries bordering Russia.

Take a look at how rapidly all this is moving.  In 2016 while running for president, Trump asked former CIA Director Michael Hayden during an official candidate briefing, “if we have them, why can’t we use them,” referring to U.S. nuclear weapons.  A year later, Trump told the Pentagon he wanted to increase our nuclear stockpile.  In 2018, he announced we were pulling out of the INF Treaty.  In 2019, Trump ordered our formal resignation from the treaty.  In 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine.  In 2023, Russia moved tactical nuclear weapons into its neighbor, Belarus.  In 2024, after Finland officially joined NATO, Russia began its build-up of military forces along its borders with the Baltic states, including Finland.

And this week, Trump threatened to pull the U.S. out of NATO if he is elected. 

Great Britain and France already have their own nuclear stockpiles.  It is known that Germany and Italy have the capability to develop nuclear weapons.  Already in Poland there is serious talk of either asking the U.S. to station nuclear weapons on its soil or to develop a nuclear capability of its own.  Polish Brigadier General Jaroslaw Kraszewski was quoted in Newsweek on Monday saying that “if Warsaw had nuclear weapons it would deter possible aggression because ‘those who possess nuclear capabilities have a very high level of security.’”

An article in the British magazine The Spectator titled, “It's time to give Poland nuclear weapons” by Dalibor Rohac, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., talked of “Trump-proofing the security of Eastern Europe,” with nuclear weapons. The the idea of talking about Donald Trump and nuclear weapons in the same sentence makes me physically ill.

It’s never a good sign when countries start thinking about having nukes as a good thing.  The presence of nuclear weapons on your soil turns you into a target.  It sends shivers down my spine to state the obvious fact that a nuclear weapon exploding anywhere in densely-populated Europe would kill millions. The nuclear clock just ticked a second closer to midnight.