European countries support the illegal war against Iran, arguing that Iran should not become a nuclear power. This happens without evidence that Iran was actually on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon. Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu claimed last year that Iran’s nuclear capabilities had been destroyed by US airstrikes and would not pose a threat for decades.
Meanwhile, France and the United Kingdom are expanding their nuclear arsenals. And in Germany there is now speculation about whether the country should have nuclear weapons itself. That should set off alarm bells. But there is hardly any criticism of German armament, and given history that is surprising.
Even now that America, in line with what is misleadingly called the ‘post-war’ period in the Netherlands, starts one war after another, Europe suffers from a geopolitical Stockholm syndrome: it mainly mourns the American declaration of irrelevance of Europe, while it only sees Russia and China as threats. Commentators are falling over each other with pleas for autarky. European armament is the priority.
In Germany this has led to what former Chancellor Scholz called a Zeitenwende mentioned. His successor Merz repeated last year the ambition that Scholz already expressed in 2022 but could not yet finance: Germany must become the strongest non-nuclear military power in Europe as quickly as possible.
Twenty times Hiroshima
Recently, room has also emerged for discussion about German nuclear weapons. Such a nuclear arsenal is now not possible, according to Merz, and this is due to Germany’s participation in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968) and the treaty that was concluded with Western countries and the Soviet Union upon Germany’s unification in 1990. But Merz is willing to talk about German planes dropping French bombs. And the debate about German nuclear weapons is there, as is evident, for example an editorial of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung which goes against Merz and states that Germany should explore the nuclear option.
Within the German army there are calls for its own nuclear arsenal. Brigadier General Frank Pieper, director of the Bundeswehr’s Führungsakademie, drew up earlier this year LinkedIn that Germany needs “tactical nuclear weapons” as soon as possible. Let’s clarify the rhetoric: ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons, which are known as ‘small’ atomic bombs, still have up to twenty times more explosive power than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
Piepers presented his message as a “personal opinion”, but the reactions to it – and his high position – make it clear that nuclear weapons are becoming normalized as an option in Germany. Pieper has also received support. For example, from CDU politician and Bundestag member Roderich Kiesewetter. “A state that wants to be able to defend itself must create space for reflection in which the improbable and the dangerous are also considered,” he said. Kiesewetter.
In the meantime, the German government is already taking a course that is in line with a nuclear strategy. Cooperation with France, with the use of German aircraft, is discussed. And in 2025, Germany signed a contract for long-range missiles with weapons manufacturer MBDA, and it participates in the European Long-Range Strike Approach (ELSA) initiative, which aims to produce missiles with a range of up to two thousand kilometers. There are of course also critics in Germany, such as Rolf Mützenich, leader of coalition partner SPD. But the fact that the discussion is being held at all makes the nuclear option conceivable. And that should worry everyone.
Anti-nuclear movement
Discussion about nuclear weapons in Germany is not entirely new. Konrad Adenauer wanted atomic weapons for West Germany in the late 1950s. This was then met with the threat from American President John F. Kennedy to withdraw troops from the Federal Republic. The pacifist and anti-nuclear movements were also stirring. The current situation is different. The US will not treat Germany like Iran, and a strong pacifist or anti-militarist movement is absent, while Europe is rapidly arming itself.
It is precisely this armament that now also opens up the space for the previously unthinkable. Even Joschka Fischer, a former German foreign minister with roots in the pacifist movement of the 1980s, advocates more European nuclear weapons. Does this mean we are dealing with realism? On the contrary. As Sterre van Buuren recently clearly explained in this newspaper, nuclear armament is completely irrational and nuclear weapons make the world less safe.
The concept of ‘nuclear umbrella’ has come up a lot lately. But there is no umbrella that is against nuclear fallout protects. What is seen as a lost ‘security guarantee’ – the American promise to use its nuclear weapons to defend Europe – in fact amounted to Europe’s role as a puppet state of an imperialist America, whose competition with the Soviet Union almost led to a nuclear holocaust on several occasions. Security guarantees do not exist without that guarantee being given to everyone, and nuclear armament is the exact opposite of that.
This becomes extra urgent when we take a closer look at the reasoning of CDU politician Kiesewetter. Protection of Germany by France could, he says, be unreliable because the National Front could come to power. But the same goes for Germany, where the neo-fascist AfD could become the largest party. Anyone in Europe who has any sense of history should therefore be concerned about Germany’s nuclear armament ambitions.
But in Europe there seems to have been a narrowing of consciousness: only Russia can be seen as an enemy, and a historically informed long-term perspective on other dangers, such as a shifting balance of power within Europe, is lacking.
Criticism of European armaments in no way means downplaying Russian aggression. However, we must ask ourselves what the irrationality of the nuclear option – German, French or otherwise – tells us about the reasonableness of conventional armament. If political leaders truly assume that it may one day be better to destroy all life on Earth than to suffer a temporary loss of sovereignty, how seriously should we take them when they present conventional armament as the most normal thing in the world?
It is normal in the Netherlands for anti-militarism to receive derisive responses. Bas Heijne had it in this newspaper intellectually frivolous about “smug ‘Peace!’ shouters on the left flank, for whom NATO will always remain the greatest evil” – four days before the US bombed more than a hundred and fifty Iranian girls and six days before NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on the US-Israeli war against Iran stated: “It is very important what the US does here.”
Anti-geopolitics
But questioning armaments is precisely what a democracy needs to avoid sliding complacently from conventional armaments towards considering nuclear options. We should therefore consult Günther Anders (1902-1992), the ‘philosopher of the atomic age’, who made it clear that atomic weapons are not means to achieve goals, but devices that lead us towards the apocalypse. And like Anders wrote in 1956: the ‘favorite trick’ used to downplay the danger of atomic bombs is to call those who warn about them a ‘traitor’.
Anyone who has the privilege of thinking professionally has the responsibility to be critical of leaders who, in a wild armament drive, further expand the boundaries of what is acceptable by also statistically factoring in a nuclear holocaust. It is the task of thought to guard against the excessive claims on life that emanate from political power.
What is forgotten in European geopolitical discussions is the prefix ‘geo’. That stands for the earth, the supporting ground of all life. Even considering a nuclear arsenal is anti-geopolitical, an enmity towards the Earth and therefore a dangerous stupidity that must be combated.
