Since the mid-2010s, the collapse of key arms control treaties between great powers has unravelled the post–Cold War security architecture in Europe, heightening nuclear risks to Europe. At the same time, a fresh movement emerged, calling for the total abolition of nuclear weapons, due to their catastrophic humanitarian consequences. European policy-makers found themselves between a rock and a hard place – between the global strategic conundrum calling for growing attention to nuclear deterrence, and domestic audiences demanding just the opposite. Michal Onderco’s new book Europe’s Nuclear Umbrella is an account of how European policy protagonists navigated this balance.
Onderco’s account offers a glimpse into the complexity of democratic foreign policy-making in the twenty-first century in a policy area fraught with difficult questions, some of which also animate current alliance politics: Will the legitimacy of nuclear sharing be increasingly contested when a Trump administration forcibly redefines the US role in Europe and globally? What role could nuclear sharing play in a more Europeanised nuclear deterrent? Could a weakening US conventional posture in Europe be compensated for by a stronger nuclear one?
Programme
Keynote:
Michal Onderco, Professor of International Relations at Erasmus University Rotterdam; affiliate at Peace Research Center Prague
Comments:
Matti Pesu, Senior Research Fellow, FIIA
Chair:
Katja Creutz, Programme Director, FIIA
