Some recent headlines speak volumes of thoughtless mush.
“Europe Is Ready to Shelter Under France’s Nuclear Umbrella” (Foreign Policy); “Can Europe Build Its Own Nuclear Umbrella?” (FirstPost); “France has a nuclear umbrella. Could its European allies fit under it?” (BBC); “To many in Europe, Trump has punched holes in NATO’s nuclear umbrella” (CNN); “Canada’s allies are wondering if they can still shelter under the U.S. nuclear umbrella” (CBS).
The phrase “nuclear umbrella” is designed to evoke the image of an impenetrable shield of protection. In the comforting euphemism of diplomats, the phrase means a promise to “defend” compliant non-nuclear states using nuclear weapons. In military circles, it is one government’s threat to attack a third country with nuclear weapons on behalf of an ally that has no nukes.
The practice of holding a “nuclear umbrella” for allies is sometimes called “extended deterrence.” It’s been offered by the United States to nuclear-free European countries, along with Japan, Australia, South Korea, and others.
CNN reported that Polish President Andrzej Duda, on March 13, called on President Trump to deploy U.S. nuclear weapons in Poland, much like it does in Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. CBS News reported on May 7 that current talk of the “nuclear umbrella” is “driven by Trump’s threats not to protect allies that don’t meet his expectations.”
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace reported recently that Europeans “seriously worry about whether Washington will continue to extend nuclear deterrence — sometimes referred to as a nuclear ‘umbrella’ — to the continent.” The “Europeans” the CEIP refers to are only those who have no understanding of nuclear weapons.
Use of the sugar-coated word “deterrence” hides the ghastly, devastating, suicidal reality of nuclear weapons attacks, and has the additional power of teaching the public to live in fear of other countries. As one vice president of a group called “Liberal International” put it recently, “The U.S. nuclear umbrella over Europe is the ultimate defense against hostilities toward NATO countries.” The question “What would a nuclear attack achieve?” never enters the conversation.
The late Daniel Ellsberg, as an advisor to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, drafted plans for nuclear attacks. He wrote in The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, “The plan called for a total of 40 megatons — megatons — on Moscow, about four thousand times more than the bomb over Hiroshima.” In Things That Can and Cannot Be Said, Ellsberg says about this plan, “Our private, top-secret estimates were that we would kill every European, a hundred million Europeans, without a single U.S. or Soviet warhead landing on West Europe. Just from the fallout of the attacks we were planning on Russia and East Europe. One hundred million.”
The self-destructive nature of nuclear war was understood by some Europeans, including Germany’s (future Chancellor) Helmut Schmidt, who warned in his 1962 book Defense or Retaliation that the use of U.S. nuclear weapons “will not defend Europe, but destroy it.”
Today’s editors and heads of state ought to be focused on how to eliminate nuclear umbrellas rather than hundreds of millions of compatriots, allies and friends. — JL
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