{"id":226793,"date":"2025-06-30T14:12:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T14:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/226793\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T14:12:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T14:12:08","slug":"german-conservative-leader-calls-for-european-nuclear-deterrent-independent-from-us-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/226793\/","title":{"rendered":"German conservative leader calls for European nuclear deterrent \u2018independent\u2019 from US \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cEurope must become a deterrent,\u201d said Spahn in the interview with Welt, which is owned by POLITICO parent company Axel Springer. \u201cAmerican nuclear bombs are also stationed in Germany for this purpose. But that is not enough in the long term.\u00a0We need to talk about German or European participation in the nuclear arsenal of France and the U.K., possibly also about our own participation with other European states. That will cost a lot of money. But if you want protection, you have to finance it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Merz <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/europe-nuclear-weapons-nato-donald-trump-vladimir-putin-friedrich-merz\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">raised the issue of a homegrown nuclear deterrent<\/a> in February while he was still a candidate for chancellor. \u201cWe need to have discussions with both the British and the French \u2014 the two European nuclear powers \u2014 about whether nuclear sharing, or at least nuclear security \u2026 could also apply to us,\u201d Merz said at the time.<\/p>\n<p>In the interview, Spahn floated the idea \u201cof rotating responsibility\u201d for nuclear deterrence \u201cbetween member states on a random basis.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Experts sharply criticized Spahn for his remarks, especially as Germany has no nuclear weapons of its own \u2014\u00a0and is far from acquiring them given the politically unpopularity of such a move. That hardly puts Germany in a position to lead on the issue of a European deterrent, some argued.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis proposal ignores reality,\u201d Stefanie Babst, a former NATO deputy assistant secretary-general, said <a href=\"https:\/\/www.deutschlandfunk.de\/interview-mit-stefanie-babst-ex-nato-analystin-zu-nuklearer-schutzschirm-100.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in an interview with German public radio<\/a>. &#8220;France and Britain are certainly not waiting for Germany to finally let their nuclear weapons be circled around a bit.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cEurope must become a deterrent,\u201d said Spahn in the interview with Welt, which is owned by POLITICO parent&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[1789,6906,32,33,2000,299,36,1945,1824,2199,17860,23762,1303,8041,46,811,3053,15,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-226793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-belgium","9":"tag-democratic-party","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-elections","12":"tag-eu","13":"tag-europe","14":"tag-france","15":"tag-friedrich-merz","16":"tag-germany","17":"tag-italy","18":"tag-jens-spahn","19":"tag-logistics","20":"tag-nuclear-power","21":"tag-nuclear-weapons","22":"tag-policy","23":"tag-security","24":"tag-the-netherlands","25":"tag-united-kingdom","26":"tag-united-states"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}