How to leverage US nukes overseas – Breaking Defense
The US should use an international desire for nuclear weapons as geopolitical bargaining chips, write two nuclear experts.
By Henry Sokolski and Thomas D. Granton
A Global Strike Command unarmed Minuteman III ICBM missile launches during an operational test at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.
As Beijing accelerates its nuclear buildup and Moscow brandishes its nuclear weapons against NATO, there’s an opportunity to leverage America’s overseas nuclear weapons deployments to check Russian and Chinese nuclear misbehavior.
France is making noise about expanding a nuclear umbrella to other European nations. Poland and South Korea are publicly calling for Washington to deploy US nuclear weapons on their soil and Sweden has announced its willingness to host US nuclear weapons in wartime. Vice President J.D. Vance, meanwhile, has expressed misgivings about such deployments. Even if the US unambiguously committed to the deployments that these allies seek, there is a further complication: The legal and strategic foundations for US nuclear sharing are no longer convincing — if they ever were.
