Andy Burnham should publicly offer to provide a nuclear umbrella over Europe if he becomes the UK’s next leader, a top European diplomat told The i Paper.
Wolfgang Ischinger, the former German ambassador to the UK and US, who is now chairman of the Munich Security Conference, said the next prime minister should join France in publicly offering nuclear capabilities for the European continent – including, long-term, Ukraine.
The UK and France are the only two European countries to have sovereign nuclear weapons. French President Emmanuel Macron said earlier this year that he was willing to discuss providing a nuclear umbrella for the continent.
“I think if these two nuclear powers could put together and make that kind of a statement together, that would be my dream,” Ischinger said.
He added that it would enhance European security if the UK could tell its European Nato partners that it was “ready to start discussions” about how its nuclear capabilities “can be put to the best possible use, not only in terms of defending your own homeland, but in terms of defending Europe”.
Ischinger said this should include non-EU members, like Norway, Turkey and even Ukraine in the future.
With Russian aggression rising and doubts over the US’s commitment to guaranteeing European security under Donald Trump, pressure is growing on Nato allies to ramp up defence commitments.
The UK has four nuclear-armed submarines, one of which continuously operates on patrol at sea, which are set to be updated in the 2030s. It already provides its nuclear capabilities to Nato, of which most European countries are members, and has done since 1962. This means it effectively already offers a nuclear deterrent to the majority of the European continent.
A Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesperson told The i Paper: “We are the only European ally to commit its nuclear deterrent to the defence of Nato. This means that all Nato allies, including those in Europe, already benefit from the protection of our nuclear deterrent.”
HMS Vengeance is the youngest of the UK’s four Vanguard Class nuclear submarines (Photo by Andrew Linnett/MoD)However, Ischinger said that a public statement of intent with France would refresh and assert the UK’s commitment to nuclear deterrence and send a strong signal to Russia, while ensuring all European members were protected.
“I’m always thinking about what our friends in Moscow think,” he said. “If future prime minister Burnham and the President of France would take some kind of step along these lines, I think that will be noted as a serious declaration of determination and defence and deterrence by two nations which have a mission of leading Europe.”
Europe has long relied on the notion that the US, with its vast nuclear arsenal, would be enough to deter nuclear conflict. But in light of Trump’s growing divergence from Europe, policymakers are considering whether Europe needs a stronger nuclear shield of its own.
In March, Macron said he had decided to “open the strategic debate on the protection of our allies on the European continent”. He suggested that French nuclear capabilities could be temporarily stationed in other European countries.
The Danish and Polish prime ministers welcomed the comments. Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever also backed the idea of a pan-European “nuclear umbrella”.
Sir Keir Starmer and former defence secretary John Healey visit a Vanguard class submarine off the coast of Scotland (Photo: Simon Dawson/10 Downing Street)The UK and France could never replace the American arsenal, with far more limited capabilities, but they may help strengthen the case against a Russian invasion of eastern Europe.
“With storm clouds continuing to gather over Europe and the American nuclear umbrella seeming increasingly unreliable, European states have turned to the UK and to France for cover and are expecting them to rise to the challenge,” said Darya Dolzikova and Héloïse Fayet of defence think-tank RUSI.
Dolzikova told The i Paper that the UK would be less able to offer capabilities to Europe than France because, unlike Paris, London already has nuclear commitments to Nato and has a less diverse nuclear portfolio.
“In the UK, we’re a little bit more constrained, because we have our deterrent committed to Nato,” she said. “Also, our posture is limited in the sense that, unlike the French – who have both their submarines and the air-launched capabilities – we only have submarines.
“It’s a lot easier to forward-base and to signal visibly with fighter jets than it is to do that with submarines.”
British Navy personnel stand atop the Trident nuclear submarine HMS Victorious on patrol off the west coast of Scotland (Photo: Andy Buchanan/AFP)However, any change to the UK’s nuclear position would be “complicated, costly, and time-consuming,” Dolzikova said. “Changing our nuclear posture would be a decades-long process at a time when we’re already scrambling to raise defence spending, meet obligations to Nato, and already trying to deliver on modernisation of the production of new submarines.”
Dolzikova said she talks to people across Europe and asked specifically what they would expect the UK to do differently. “And nobody can give me an answer, because the UK’s nuclear doctrine is very, very opaque.”
But in the short term, more political signalling, like Ishinger suggested, might help, Dolzikova said, including being more open about the workings of the UK-France nuclear steering group.Dolzikova said the French do strategic communication on their nuclear deterrent very effectively. “I don’t think we’ve quite figured out what that looks like for the UK yet,” she added. “I think there’s a lot of work to be done on that… [which] can help both deter adversaries more effectively, but also assure our allies in Europe.”
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