Author: Olamide Samuel
Published on: 11/03/2025 | 00:00:00

AI Summary:
Growing anxieties about American retrenchment and the collapse of post-World War II security arrangements have sent European leaders scrambling to put forward alternatives. Ahead of the German elections last month, Friedrich Merz, the head of the Christian Democratic Union, opined: “We need to have discussions with both the British and the French – the two European nuclear powers” The proposal for some form of European nuclear sharing arrangement with France and the United Kingdom to protect against threats from Moscow is not new. German’s 90.6-billion euro ($98bn) military budget remains crippled by inefficiencies, with only 50 percent of army equipment meeting NATO readiness standards. France and the UK lack conventional force multipliers that underpin US extended deterrence. Trump has shown that he has no qualms about abandoning allies if he sees no benefit for the US strategic interest. Recent moves to stop intelligence sharing and military aid for Ukraine and his conditioning mutual defence on military spending have exposed NATO’s fraying norms. A European nuclear club would deepen fragmentation, emboldening revisionist actors like Russia and China while diverting resources from critical gaps in AI advancement. Austria, an EU member, has already played a key role in nuclear talks between the West and Iran as well as the 2020 US-Russia-China trilateral arms control discussions. Taking a lead on nuclear disarmament would be the sort of leadership that would reflect a mature interpretation of security policy. Some critics maintain that negotiating with Russia rewards aggression. Yet history shows even bitter adversaries can cooperate on arms control when interests align. Europe now faces a choice: to cling to Cold War relics while the planet burns, or to pioneer a security paradigm prioritising planetary survival over great-power vanity. The decision will define not just Europe’s future—but all of humanity’s.

Original: 1140 words
Summary: 295 words
Percent reduction: 74.12%

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