{"id":81550,"date":"2023-04-19T03:00:11","date_gmt":"2023-04-19T07:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=81550"},"modified":"2023-04-18T11:19:59","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T15:19:59","slug":"time-to-remove-us-nuclear-weapons-from-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/04\/19\/time-to-remove-us-nuclear-weapons-from-europe\/","title":{"rendered":"Time to remove US nuclear weapons from Europe?"},"content":{"rendered":"

CDR Salamander<\/a> has long advocated getting the final few American “tactical” nuclear weapons off European soil and makes the case for doing it now:<\/p>\n

It may seem like a strange thing to propose while there is the largest land war in Europe since 1945 going on, but as it is something I’ve been a supporter of for a few decades I might as well be consistent: we are long overdue to remove American nuclear weapons from Europe.<\/p>\n

It is 2023. Just look at this map.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The Soviet Union stopped existing over three decades ago.<\/p>\n

Even though we’ve decreased from 7,000 warheads down to 100 … there really is no reason to keep what remains in Europe.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Gravity bombs on continental Europe – that require tactical aircraft to deliver them – are the least survivable, reliable, or timely way to deliver a nuclear weapon.<\/li>\n
  2. There is no such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon. I don’t care what some theorist proposes to defend their pet theories, you lob one nuke an order of magnitude larger than the Hiroshima bomb and only a foolish nation would let their strategic nuclear forces stay unused and in danger.<\/li>\n
  3. Gravity bombs are not a first strike weapon and are a poor second strike weapon. As such, you have to consider that the the time gap from approval to flash-boom would be so long the war would be over before your F-XX pickled their nuke over their target – even if the aircraft made it off the ground.<\/li>\n
  4. If they are NATO weapons, you not only have to get NATO to approve their use, but host nation to as well … in addition to the USA. Do you really think the Russians would not leverage their influence with the useful idiots in the Euro-Green parties, former communists, and general black-block anti-nuke activists to politically of physically stop the use of the nukes, especially in BEL, NLD, DEU, and ITA? Add that to point 3 above.<\/li>\n
  5. Especially with the weapons in Turkey – the risk of these bombs having a bad day due to human or natural causes is non-zero. In the days of mutually assured destruction, those non-zero odds were manageable, but there is no reasonable person in the third decade of the 21st Century who can with a straight face explain to you why any tactical, operational, or strategic use justify their presence. They deter no enemy, but puts every friend in danger.<\/li>\n
  6. Look again at the map above. Exactly what target set are you going to “service” at that range (non-refueled)?<\/li>\n
  7. If things go nuclear in Europe then the right weapons are either British, French, and if they must be American are sitting in a silo in CONUS, a SSBN in the Atlantic, or a B-2 in Missouri. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    CDR Salamander has long advocated getting the final few American “tactical” nuclear weapons off European soil and makes the case for doing it now: It may seem like a strange thing to propose while there is the largest land war in Europe since 1945 going on, but as it is something I’ve been a supporter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1118,7,339,5,1119,13,663],"tags":[220,107,249,726],"class_list":["post-81550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-germany","category-history","category-italy","category-military","category-russia","category-usa","category-weapons","tag-nato","tag-nukes","tag-turkey","tag-ukraine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-ldk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81550"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81552,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81550\/revisions\/81552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}