Expert calls for more nuclear weapons for Europe

Atomic upgrade

Security expert: This is the only way to deter Putin

Europe has to increase its nuclear weapons arsenal, demands scientist Maximilian Terhalle. Emmanuel Macron makes an offer.

A German scientist sees the need for more than 1,000 other nuclear weapons in Europe to keep up with the Russian arsenal. Maximilian Terhalle, guest scientist at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, told the British “Telegraph”, Putin has at least 1,550 nuclear long -range missiles, while Europe only has a few hundred.

“Trump has made a friend of an enemy, Russia, and that is very worrying. In the event that America withdraws entirely from Europe (which is not yet the case), we have to ask ourselves how we will compensate for it, because Russia’s imperial ambition has by no means become less,” said Maximilian Terhalle.

The scientist, who also teaches in Hamburg at the Bundeswehr management academy, demands that Europe are equating Russia. This is the only way to deter Putin’s deterrent. France and Great Britain would have around 450 long -range missiles with strategic nuclear explosives – those who can quickly decide a war. There would also be about 200 smaller, tactical nuclear weapons. The United States is said to have around 5,000 rockets.

However, there is movement when it comes to European upgrading. French President Emmanuel Macron has proposed a “strategic dialogue” with the European partners who do not have nuclear weapons. “We have a protective shield, not it,” Macron told the newspaper “Le Parisien” on Saturday. Under the impression of the U.S. government’s turn to Moscow, he added: “And you can no longer depend on the nuclear deterrent of the USA.”

“We need a strategic dialogue with those who have no nuclear weapons, said Macron. This would also make France “stronger”. Macron told the newspaper “Journal du Dimanche” that it would take between five and ten years to build a European defense independent of NATO.

Security researcher Terhalle has previously pleaded for Berlin to get together with the EU allies, to buy or lease 1,550 US warheads for a nuclear deterrent conducted by Europe. The probably new Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) had called for France and Great Britain before the Bundestag election to expand their nuclear protective shade to Europe. The aim is to become more independent of the USA under Trump. Already under the Merkel government there had been an offer by the then French President Nicolas Sarkozy to expand the nuclear screen. At the time, Merkel declined that.