NATO Nuclear Policy, the Ukraine Crisis, and the Wales Summit

Abstract

NATO’s 2010 Strategic Concept called upon the Alliance to carry out three core tasks: collective defense, crisis management, and cooperative security. Since the beginning of the Alliance each of those tasks has been emphasized at different times. Following the 9/11 attacks NATO joined the United States in becoming an expeditionary alliance, focusing on crisis management and collective security through robust partnership programs and out of area conventional military operations around the globe. Deterrence policy, and nuclear matters in particular, were de-emphasized. Indeed, some argued that there was no longer any requirement for NATO to have a nuclear strategy, nor US warheads stationed in Europe. With the end of its mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, the member states were already facing the challenge of determining whether the next version of NATO would continue to play the same expeditionary role. Some of the new member states in Central Europe, however, were hoping to return to an emphasis on Article 5 of the Washington Treaty: collective security and territorial defense. Russia’s aggression in early 2014 against Ukraine made that a much more immediate concern for the Alliance as a whole, and gave greater import to the NATO summit later that year.

This chapter considers NATO nuclear policy in light of recent events and decisions from the September Wales Summit. It reviews the significant diminishment of the nuclear mission since the end of the Cold War, and addresses possible changes or updates to that mission given Russia’s sudden change from strategic partner to potential adversary. It emphasizes the importance of deterrence, which includes nuclear weapons, missile defenses, and conventional forces, to the underlying mission of the Alliance, which is the security of the member states, their populations, and their strategic interests.