If Germany withdraws active support for NATO’s nuclear deterrence, the United States should relocate most of the 35,000 U.S. military personnel in Germany to other NATO member states.
President Joe Biden is loath to criticize Germany’s disinterest in being a reliable ally. Still, the relocation may soon become inevitable.
Consider that Germany’s government-in-waiting has already abandoned NATO’s 2%-of-GDP basic defense spending target. But now, as Constanze Stelzenmuller observes in the Financial Times, moves are afoot to remove Germany’s participation in NATO’s nuclear deterrence. The Green and SPD parties, two of the three parties negotiating to form the next coalition government (the free market FDP being the other), are pushing for Germany to join the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty as an observer. Stelzenmuller further notes how a top SPD lawmaker, Rolf Mutzenich, also wants Berlin to remove U.S. B-61 nuclear bombs from German soil.
Even judged by German standards, Mutzenich is a particularly ludicrous appeaser of Vladimir Putin. He opposed the expulsion of Russian spies following the Russian GRU’s 2018 nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal, his daughter, and an innocent British woman. (Although, considering that Germany hosts elements of Russia’s chemical weapons program, Mutzenich’s stance isn’t entirely unsurprising). Mutzenich has also attacked the German defense minister (a rare voice for NATO values and interests) for declaring that nuclear weapons would be used against Russia in the worst-case scenario. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer had, Mutzenich said, “succumb[ed]” to “Cold War rhetoric.”
Now anticipating the coronation of an SPD chancellor in the form of Olaf Scholz, Mutzenich wants U.S. nuclear weapons gone and no replacement of the German air force jets that could drop those weapons. This makes Mutzenich a pitch-perfect choir boy for Russia’s nuclear strategy.
The U.S. could not sit idle were the new government to take this action. While Germany, of course, has the sovereign right to decide what U.S. forces and equipment is allowed on its soil, the U.S. has a responsibility to NATO security. It is a crucial alliance undeserving of German appeasement games. Losing the strategic depth that Germany currently affords NATO nuclear forces, the U.S. would have even less reason to keep other military forces in that country. There would be greater tactical, strategic, and financial utility in relocating U.S. forces to Poland and the Baltics. France remains a reliable NATO nuclear deterrence ally, so NATO’s deterrence strategy could be maintained without Germany.
Regardless, Germany’s evolving nuclear strategy demands U.S. attention.
