(Photo credit: United States Air Force)
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and UK defence minister Al Carns are stoking fears of war with Russia and another round of incitement to nuclear proliferation across Europe is underway in response to President Trump’s latest anti-European rhetoric that accompanied the new US National Security Strategy.
When the US announced a new National Security Strategy last week that said Europe was in danger of “civilisational erasure” and questioning its ability and will to defend itself, it was bound to produce another spasm of panic among European politicians..
The fact that Trump followed up by using an interview with Politico magazine to launch his most outspoken attacks to date on the European Union – calling European politicians “weak” and describing Europe itself as “decaying”, meant the “proliferation chatter” would be bound to break out again.
And it did. One of the UK’s most read papers, the Daily Mail, came out with a classic of its kind – the argument that the only way to keep the “warmonger Putin” at bay is more European nuclear weapons.
NATO Secretary-General, Mark Rutte, made a speech in Germany raising the prospect of war with Russia within a few years. He approvingly quoted former US President Reagan’s infamous “evil empire” comments about the Soviet Union and added “Today, President Putin is in the empire-building business again”. Lamenting Europe’s lack of preparedness for this.
His comments were quickly echoed by UK defence minister, Al Carns, and the head of the UK’s spy agency.
In his speech, Rutte did not mention nuclear weapons, but when asked about the prospect of the US seeking to “rebalance strategic stability in Europe”, he said Europe will need “to take care more of our own events” without elaborating.
This new round of proliferation chatter is out of tune with what European citizens want. Recent polling in Europe shows a majority are against the stationing of US nuclear weapons on the continent or more countries developing nuclear weapons capabilities.
Throughout 2025, Trump’s return to the presidency has provoked debate in European countries about the need for new nuclear armament as politicians and their think tank and media allies appeared to panic at the prospect that the US commitment to defending its European allies is no longer rock solid.
With Russia making slow but steady progress in its war with Ukraine and efforts to end the fighting beset by zero sum attitudes, European leaders started making increasingly dangerous statements about the need for France and Britain to commit to use their nuclear weapons to defend their continental allies and even advocating that more countries get nuclear weapons.
As we wrote in March, calling for nuclear proliferation flies in the face of European countries’ international legal commitments under the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and threatens to provoke the spread of nuclear weapons to countries in other parts of the world as well.
And it has not just been confined to rhetoric.
France has announced it will spend more on nuclear weapons and increase the number of nuclear-armed aircraft in its strategic forces. While the UK has said it will buy nuclear-capable aircraft from the US and restore the air-launched nuclear capability it phased out over a quarter of a century ago.
The debate – among politicians, in the media and at think tanks – on how to ensure Europe’s security needs to include those who wish to uphold international law and encourage a more responsible and strategically sound discussion of how Europe can protect its citizens. More nuclear weapons will only make nuclear conflict, with all the devastation that would wreak, more likely.
The Executive Director of ICAN, Melissa Parke, has made the stakes clear: “Rather than making Europeans safer, this unthinking, careless talk about the need for more nuclear weapons only increases the danger for Europeans. Nuclear weapons are not a security blanket for Europe, but a suicide vest – the sooner nuclear weapons are removed, the better for Europe and the world”.
