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Since the end of the Cold War, the number of US nuclear weapons stationed in Europe has fallen more than seventy-fold, yet their presence in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey remains a quiet pillar of NATO's deterrence posture. This "nuclear sharing" arrangement, central to the Alliance since its founding, has long been contested by public opinion, political parties, and civil society across Europe, without ever being abandoned by host governments. This paradox lies at the heart of the seminar: why does such an unpopular policy persist?
Drawing on a novel comparative study of all five host nations, the discussion will show how technocratic elites navigate the tension between responsiveness to domestic pressures and responsibility toward international and allied commitments. It will explore the sources of this domestic contestation - public opinion, parties, civil society mobilisation - and how political and administrative elites manage it, against a backdrop of collapsing arms control, the war in Ukraine, and renewed debate over the future of nuclear weapons in Europe.
Speaker : Dr. Michal Onderco, Professor of International Relations at Erasmus University Rotterdam and Author of Europe’s Nuclear Umbrella: Contesting Nuclear Sharing since 2010, Cambridge University Press, 2025.
Chair : Héloïse Fayet, Head of the Deterrence & Proliferation Research Program at Ifri.
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La dissuasion nucléaire française à l’épreuve d’un nouvel ordre européen – Analyse du discours présidentiel du 2 mars 2026
Le discours du 2 mars 2026 du président de la République sur la dissuasion nucléaire marque une inflexion stratégique importante dans un contexte international dégradé. Entre menace russe persistante et incertitudes sur les garanties de sécurité américaines, la France affirme une ambition renforcée pour la défense européenne. La notion de « dissuasion avancée » et les évolutions capacitaires annoncées par Emmanuel Macron esquissent ainsi une nouvelle étape, à la fois structurante et durable.
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