US Nuclear Weapons in Europe - Natural Resources Defense Council

U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe • Hans M. Kristensen/Natural Resources Defense Council, 2005
plans for the potential use of those political weapons, the decision did not bring clarity.
In its history for 1994, the Headquarters for U.S. Air Forces in Europe explained:
“Decisions regarding the proper level of nuclear readiness were not easy
to make. The fundamental purpose of nuclear forces was political: to
preserve peace, prevent coercion, and deter war. The threat of large-scale
nuclear assault on Europe dissipated with the collapse of the Soviet Union,
and the need for a large, combat-ready stockpile of nuclear weapons was
gone. NATO leaders were hopeful that the foundation of European
security and stability would shift increasingly from reliance on military
might to reliance on international diplomacy and cooperation. At the same
time, parts of Europe were far from peaceful, and NATO recognized that
diplomacy and conventional forces alone might not be enough to deter
aggression and prevent war. USAFE conducted its planning in the context
of NATO policy, which stated that the alliance would, for the foreseeable
future, maintain an appropriate mix of conventional and nuclear forces in
Europe. The question remained: How many, where, and what balance
among the member nations, and at what level of readiness?” 130
The U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense was much more euphoric about the impact of
the NPR, suggesting it had created a whole new nuclear doctrine: “The new posture…is
no longer based on Mutual Assured Destruction, no longer based on MAD,” stated
Defense Secretary William Perry. “We have coined a new word for our new posture,
which we call Mutual Assured Safety, or MAS.” 131 The new terminology has not been
used by the Pentagon since.
Nuclear Deployment Reorganized
In addition to strategic factors such as Russian non-strategic nuclear force levels,
proliferation, general war prevention, and political imperatives, NATO’s non-strategic
nuclear posture in the mid1990s was also strongly affected by internal reorganization.
The major Base Realignments and Closures (BRAC) that were undertaken by the United
States in 1993–1995 resulted in concentrating U.S. Air Force nuclear operations at four
main bases; RAF Lakenheath in England, Ramstein Air Base in Germany, Incirlik Air
Base in Turkey and Aviano Air Base in Italy. At the same time, nuclear weapons were
withdrawn from several host country nuclear air bases, beginning with including Rimini
Air Base in Italy in August 1993, 132 followed by Nörvenich Air Base and Memmingen
Air Base in Germany in 1995. 133
The remaining MUNSS were organized under three Regional Support Groups (RSGs)
activated on July 1, 1994: the 603 RSG at RAF Mildenhall to manage the nuclear
weapons stored in the United Kingdom; the 616 RSG at Aviano Air Base in Italy for
management of nuclear weapons stored in Italy and Greece; and the 617 RSG at Sembach
Air Base in Germany covering nuclear weapons stored in Belgium, the Netherlands, and
Germany. In Turkey, the 39 th Wing had administrative control for the MUNSS since the
wing had no permanently assigned aircraft. 134
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