With the Russian attack on Ukraine, a specter of the Cold War returns: a nuclear attack. How real is this danger? Is there still hope for a world without nuclear weapons? In the ntv podcast “We are history” Frank Sauer gives answers.
In 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron described NATO as “brain dead”. But since the Russian attack on Ukraine, the defense alliance has found a new purpose and is repositioning itself. For example, the number of soldiers belonging to the rapid reaction force will increase almost tenfold from 40,000 to more than 300,000.
“These are historic decisions that are made. That completely clears up the last three decades in which we tried to organize security in Europe together with Russia,” Frank Sauer analyzes in the ntv podcast “We are history”. The NATO-Russia Founding Act, treaties, discussion forums in which Russia also took part – all of these things were wiped off the table with the attack on Ukraine, explains the political scientist from the Bundeswehr University in Munich. “And now we have to make an effort, also in the interests of our friends in Eastern and Central Europe, to organize security in Europe against Russia” – and thus against a nuclear power.
“It must be a cause for concern. But there is no reason to be afraid,” is how Sauer sums up the current state of the nuclear threat from his point of view. “You have to distinguish between two things: the rhetoric component and the psychological warfare component. Putin wants to put us in shock so that we don’t help Ukraine. The other thing is: what’s happening on the ground?” According to experts, not much at the moment, there is no acute threat. No launchers have been deployed.
Nonetheless, the threat is looming again, primarily through the phenomenon of nuclear sharing. “The United States has an agreement with six European countries that states: In order to practice extended deterrence, the United States will station nuclear weapons from its arsenal in these countries. In an emergency, Bundeswehr weapon systems would then deliver US nuclear bombs to the target. This arrangement exists, Germany is involved in it. From a legal point of view, it’s not unproblematic,” says Frank Sauer, summarizing the situation. A similar agreement was reached by Russia earlier this year: the Belarusian constitution was amended to allow Russian nuclear weapons to be stationed on its territory, Sauer explains. “This destabilizes the situation as a whole and makes everything more confusing.”
