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

CHAPTER 21
ARMS CONTROL AFTER START
Malcolm Chalmers
Since the end of the Cold War, with little political
controversy, the number of U.S. nuclear weapons
in Europe has been reduced by 95 percent. This trend
might have continued further. But political controversy
has ensured that it has now been brought, at least
temporarily, to a halt. The renewed focus on nuclear
disarmament signaled in President Barack Obama’s
Prague speech on April 5, 2009, followed in October
2009 by the formation of a new German government
committed to removal of nuclear weapons from its
territory, provided encouragement for disarmament
advocates throughout Europe, while raising alarms
among supporters of the nuclear status quo. Old <strong>and</strong>
familiar arguments seemingly forgotten after the end
of the Cold War were dusted off. Countless conferences
<strong>and</strong> seminars were initiated. After years of absence
from the agenda, nuclear issues began to be debated
once more at senior levels of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (<strong>NATO</strong>) Alliance.
The basing of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe does
not excite the public passion of the 1980s, on either side
of the debate. But echoes of that time remain apparent
within the political elite of many <strong>NATO</strong> member
states. They are particularly evident in those countries
that were on <strong>NATO</strong>’s front line facing the Warsaw
Pact in the 1980s, but were also at the forefront of public
protest against new <strong>NATO</strong> nuclear deployments.
Opposition to nuclear deployments has remained an
important element in their domestic politics, even as
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