Tactical Nuclear Weapons and NATO.pdf - Program on Strategic ...

levels of enthusiasm, most European countries are
genuinely committed to nuclear abolishment, <strong>and</strong> it
can be cogently argued that the current debate about
TNWs would not have emerged without the global vision
for “a world free of nuclear weapons” endorsed
by U.S. President Barack Obama. 15
With the main exception of France, which continues
to attribute great value to its nuclear arsenal <strong>and</strong>
remains explicitly against any change in the Alliance’s
nuclear posture, 16 in most of Europe, nuclear weapons
have not only been drastically devalued as effective
military instruments but have also lost their attractiveness
as symbols of power, status, <strong>and</strong> prestige. With
the end of the Cold War, a process of delegitimization of
nuclear weapons began. The utility of these weapons
was gradually devalued <strong>and</strong> disparaged, thereby reducing
<strong>and</strong> eventually annulling any positive evaluation
of their efficacy, legitimacy, <strong>and</strong> authority. 17 Even
among the more conservative, status-quo-prone countries
of CEE, support for U.S. nuclear forward deployment
is not ideological <strong>and</strong> absolute; rather, it is qualified,
pragmatic, <strong>and</strong> negotiable, as will be discussed in
the next section.
Within this general context, in many <strong>NATO</strong> European
nations, tactical weapons are increasingly regarded
as weapons of little or no intrinsic value per se
<strong>and</strong> as negative symbols that weaken the credibility
of Western countries’ commitment to the nonproliferation
objectives of Articles I <strong>and</strong> II of the <strong>Nuclear</strong>
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) <strong>and</strong> the disarmament
objective of Article VI. 18 The forward deployment of
U.S. nuclear weapons on the territories of countries
that are signatories of the NPT as non-nuclear-weapon
states raises issues of compatibility with the spirit
(if not the letter) of the Treaty. 19 This is more than a
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