A German minister wants to put London and Paris at the heart of a European nuclear umbrella

The scenario of Donald Trump’s return to the White House is pushing European leaders to consider new hypotheses, in the event of the victory of the former American head of state in the presidential election scheduled for the end of this year.

A German minister has also suggested that the United Kingdom and France could play a leading role in establishing a European atomic shield, an idea which would represent a major strategic turning point in terms of defense.

Christian Lindner, German Finance Minister and Chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party (FDP), believes that the evolution of the global security order could lead to the continent’s two nuclear powers playing a much more important role in this issue. , if they are ready to get involved.

“The strategic nuclear forces of France and Great Britain already contribute to the security of our alliance,” writes Christian Lindner, “and French President Emmanuel Macron has made several proposals for cooperation. We should understand Donald’s recent statements Trump as a call to further rethink this element of European security under the auspices of NATO.

“Under what political and financial conditions would Paris and London be ready to maintain or develop their own strategic capabilities for collective security? And conversely, what contribution are we ready to make? », asks the leader of the Liberal Party in a column in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.

This position by Christian Lindner comes in the wake of statements by Donald Trump, who threatened to no longer guarantee the protection of NATO countries against Russia if they did not pay their share.

The United Kingdom and France have each retained nuclear deterrents for several decades, although the two states have different approaches to their deployment and use. The British Trident system, for example, is exclusively submarine.

The long-range missiles that the submarine carries can only be launched on the order of the Prime Minister, an order which is written in a letter carried on board the submarine itself, and which must only be unsealed by the crew only if the United Kingdom is hit by a devastating attack. The order not to shoot is a prerogative of the Prime Minister.

France, for its part, has an underwater and air deterrent force, called the “Force de dissuasion”. Its arsenal of nuclear warheads is considered the third in the world, but according toArms Control Associationthe country’s launch protocol has been deliberately slowed down and could take several days.

A new German doctrine

The advent of the war in Ukraine led to a major change in German defense software, starting with a larger-than-expected effort to supply the Ukrainian army with ammunition and military equipment.

The change in security doctrine is a theme hammered out by Christian Lindner in the column he has just published.

“It is increasingly clear that the era following the end of the East-West conflict and which laid the foundations for Germany’s security, stability and prosperity through its decisions on security policy is irremediably over,” he writes.

“One thing must be clear: it is not possible to return to the security policy of the last thirty years.”

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has already called on the German army to break with decades of military doctrine and move from a defensive force ready to contribute to the maintenance of multilateral peace, to a force ready to carry out a war.

He also issued a warning, warning of the risk of attack on at least one NATO country by Russian forces over the next five years, which corroborates the existence of a “scenario of leaked German ‘exercise’ that predicts all-out war by Russia in Europe over the next two years.

The plan makes several assumptions, if Russia were to assemble troops in Belarus in preparation for an attack on one or more Baltic states, which would force NATO to deploy up to 300,000 troops in Eastern Europe by the beginning of the year 2025.