By any fair measure, Donald Trump’s policy toward Iran and the international nuclear agreement with Tehran was one of his most dramatic and consequential mistakes. By abandoning a multi-nation deal that was working effectively, the Republican inadvertently made Iran more dangerous, and prompted an adversary to ramp up its nuclear program.
Last week, the president tried to reopen negotiations. His efforts were immediately rejected.
Of course, even if officials in Tehran were receptive to the outreach — they’re not, but if they were — it’s difficult to see how a new policy would even work. The New York Times reported, “Starting in late January, President Trump suspended two programs that provide American aid to international nuclear inspectors, potentially undermining his own goal of preventing Iran from developing a nuclear arsenal.”
But while Trump struggles to deal with the consequences of his failure, and Iran moves forward with its rapidly expanding nuclear program, the White House also has to contend with a broader, evolving international conversation about nuclear proliferation. The Associated Press reported last week:
French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday he will discuss with European allies the possibility of using France’s nuclear deterrent to protect the continent from Russian threats, amid concerns over potential U.S. disengagement. France is the only nuclear power in the European Union. Macron, in a televised address ahead of a special European summit Thursday, described Russia as a “threat to France and Europe,” and said he had decided “to open the strategic debate on the protection of our allies on the European continent by our (nuclear) deterrent.”
That was soon followed by a related report in The Wall Street Journal out of Berlin.
President Trump’s embrace of Russia is causing Europeans to rethink their security and giving currency to an idea the U.S. has long sought to avoid: a nuclear-armed Germany. Friedrich Merz, who is poised to become Germany’s next chancellor, said Berlin should start talks about expanding the French and British nuclear deterrents to cover Europe, according to an interview the conservative politician did with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung weekly.
Asked specifically if Germany should pursue its own nuclear arsenal, Merz didn’t rule it out, saying “there is no need for this today.”
Later that day, The New York Times had a related report of its own, this time out of Warsaw.
Warning that a “profound change of American geopolitics” had put Poland, as well as Ukraine, in an “objectively more difficult situation,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland on Friday said his country must drastically increase the size of its military and even “reach for opportunities related to nuclear weapons.” Mr. Tusk, in a detailed speech on security to the Polish Parliament, did not explicitly propose developing a nuclear arsenal, but said that “it is time for us to look boldly at our possibilities of having the most modern weapons” and explore options for nuclear and “modern unconventional weapons.”
The Polish prime minister went on to say his government was “talking seriously” with France about the possible extension of a French nuclear umbrella that could cover other European countries.
When Trump began taking a series of overt steps to align the White House with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the impact on Ukraine was obvious and dramatic. But the reverberations also extend to the rest of the continent.
For many years, Europe — especially NATO members — felt confident that the United States and its nuclear arsenal created a deterrent that didn’t just protect Americans; it also protected U.S. allies throughout the West.
But as Trump betrays traditional U.S. allies and kowtows to the Kremlin, even creating an environment in which the White House is prepared to reward Moscow for trying to take part of Eastern Europe by force, it’s hard to blame officials in Paris, Berlin, Warsaw and elsewhere for looking for a new umbrella under which to shelter.
“Europe’s future does not have to be decided in Washington or Moscow,” Macron said last week, insisting that “the innocence of the last 30 years” which followed the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, is “now over.”
It was Trump who decided to end that generational innocence. American voters might not have realized that nuclear proliferation was on the ballot last fall, but here we are.
