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As Trust in the US Fades, Canada May Become a Nuclear Player

Europe is debating a deterrent force less reliant on Washington. Should Ottawa take part?

The upheaval in the international order prompts Canadians to think thoughts that would have seemed preposterous a short time ago. We hear our Department of National Defence is “modelling” what a US invasion might look like. A former Canadian chief of defence staff says we should keep our “options open” with respect to building our own nuclear deterrent one day.

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Anyone who had been asleep for a few years and suddenly woke up would think the world had gone mad. They would be right.

One of the key developments of the last year is the loss of confidence that the United States will honour its Article V commitment under the NATO Treaty, particularly in the light of a Russia that is seen to pose a greater threat than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Article V is the promise to come to the aid of any ally under attack. A strike against one member, in other words, would automatically widen into a war with the entire alliance. If adversaries believe that promise is now conditional, negotiable, or politically fragile, then the deterrent logic collapses. Indeed, there is now a fear—apparently put aside for the moment as far as Greenland is concerned—that the US might itself attack (or at least coerce) its allies.

This raises monumental questions for the rest of NATO. One of these is whether the US nuclear guarantee, the ultimate expression of its willingness to fulfill Article V, is still worth anything. In a major study prepared for the Munich Security Conference, European security experts explored possible responses, including the creation of an independent deterrent for the continent.

France, which possesses its own nuclear arsenal, now says it is exploring ways that deterrent could protect other European states. This would mean new warheads, new delivery systems, new command structures, and new red lines, all at a time when Russia has indicated it is prepared to threaten nuclear use to achieve its own aims in places like Ukraine. These are serious risks, but the alternative may be that countries like Germany, Poland, and Sweden will eventually seek their own deterrents if they believe the US nuclear guarantee is no longer ironclad and there is no other option.

For Canada, which has a fundamental stake in Europe’s security, hard decisions may be coming about whether, and how, we take part in this continental nuclear club.

Doubts about the American nuclear guarantee are not new. Fundamentally, deterrence rests not only on the possession of nuclear weapons but on the enemy’s perception that a country would actually use them. Former French president Charles de Gaulle famously justified France’s quest for a sovereign nuclear force by asking whether the US would trade New York for Paris; in extremis, would a US president launch nuclear missiles to defend a European city under invasion, knowing that it would invite a devastating response against an American city? Though no British prime minister ever posited the matter so starkly, these considerations were partially behind Britain’s search for its own deterrent.

Nuclear strategists refer to this as the question of “extended deterrence.” Can a country with nuclear weapons, which therefore can deter nuclear attacks against itself, credibly extend that deterrence to other countries by promising to use its weapons to defend them as well. Are such promises believable? Would the US sacrifice New York to defend Paris?

During the Cold War, NATO sought to reassure its European members. It also sought to prevent more European countries from establishing their own deterrents in what might have led to an uncontrolled spiral of proliferation. Sweden pursued nuclear weapons in the 1960s, until reassured by the US (even though Sweden was not part of NATO then). Further afield, Japan and South Korea also explored these options. All of them put these nuclear research programs aside, or at least into a deep freeze, when the US made it clear that it was prepared to guarantee their safety.

One method used to extend deterrence is so-called “dual-key” arrangements, in which US nuclear weapons are physically stationed with allied forces, but no single country can use them on its own. Both the ally and the US have to authorize their use in a crisis: the weapons are released only........

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