Mon Feb 13 2012
Twenty years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall set in motion the chain reaction that saw the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of what was known as the Iron Curtain. Despite the end of the Cold War, however, the United States is taking a go-slow approach on a touchy national security issue: whether to remove the last remaining U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe.
Some officials in Germany and other U.S. allies in Europe are advocating a withdrawal, citing President Barack Obama's call last year for a nuclear-free world. They contend that there is no longer a reason for the United States to maintain nuclear arms on their turf.
Nuclear installations in Western Europe were seen as a necessary counterbalance for Moscow's nuclear arsenal and the perceived threat of its Eastern European allies in the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union's version of NATO. The Warsaw Pact is history and so is the Soviet Union, but the United States is putting off an early decision, preferring to consult within NATO, starting at a meeting of foreign ministers in April that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to attend.
The nuclear installations reflect a long-standing U.S. military and political commitment to the defense of its European allies, who have relied on the U.S. nuclear "umbrella" as an alternative to developing their own nuclear weapons.
Washington has a similar commitment to Asian allies, including Japan and South Korea, but Asia-based U.S. nuclear arms were withdrawn in the early 1990s.
The United States has had nuclear arms in Europe since the 1950s, with about 200 weapons in place in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Turkey.
Newer members of NATO -- those closer to Russia, such as the Baltic states -- see the U.S. weapons as an important symbol of a NATO guarantee of their territorial integrity against those in Moscow who dream of reassembling the Soviet empire.
There ought to be a way of providing that reassurance short of indefinitely continuing to maintain a U.S. nuclear arsenal in Western Europe.
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