Last year, Russia suspended its participation in the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty with the US. China is significantly expanding its arsenal and is projected to have as many nuclear warheads as the US and Russia within a decade. However, countries, including China and Russia, should remain concerned about the spread of nuclear weapons, William Alberque told LRT.lt in an exclusive interview.
Alberque is a former director of NATO’s Arms Control, Disarmament, and WMD Non-Proliferation Centre (ACDC).
In an interview with LRT.lt, he discussed nuclear non-proliferation, European nuclear deterrent, Russia’s nuclear threats, and the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
You’ve been working in the field of nuclear non-proliferation for many years. But right now, some countries are suspending their participation in nuclear treaties and building up their nuclear stocks. So, is the concept of nuclear non-proliferation still alive and relevant?
I do think the concept is still alive. It remains for the United States and for a lot of the Western countries very important that fewer countries seek nuclear weapons in the future. That’s what we call horizontal proliferation or spreading out. Fewer countries should have nuclear weapons, not more. For instance, Iran should not have nuclear weapons.
Vertical proliferation is within a country, for instance, Russia. I would rather they didn’t build more, but I’m sure they will. There’s almost nothing we can do about a country that has nuclear weapons and wants to build more. But there is something we can do about a country that doesn’t have nuclear weapons and wants them.
For the United States, ever since the 50s, they’ve done everything they could to try to prevent other countries from wanting nuclear weapons. All the way back, President Dwight Eisenhower had this idea of “atoms for peace”. So, we would give countries that wanted to pursue nuclear power the means to develop nuclear reactors without a pathway towards the bomb. Unfortunately, that didn’t always work.
Then when John F. Kennedy took office, he made this a centre of his presidency. He gave a speech right after the Cuban Missile Crisis. He said: “I don’t want a future American president to have to deal with another Cuban missile crisis where it wasn’t two nuclear powers, but 20.”
One of the strategies that the US developed was the nuclear umbrella, promising to defend other countries. The reason the president gave that speech in 1962 was because the CIA had briefed him on how many countries were seeking nuclear weapons at the time, including a bunch of countries that you wouldn’t expect: Switzerland, Sweden, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, and later South Korea. We also found out that West Germany, France, and Italy had a secret agreement to potentially build nuclear weapons.
So, we didn’t even want our friends to build nuclear weapons. Instead, through NATO and through bilateral relationships, bilateral treaties, the US would guarantee countries that it would defend them with everything, including nuclear weapons, in exchange for that country not developing its own.
And then for adversaries, we developed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in order to try to prevent any country from being able to develop nuclear weapons. It’s still relevant today, but I do think Russia is not only building up its own nuclear forces, but because of Russia’s dependency on Iran and North Korea, it’s actually going to work harder to shield those countries.
I think Iran is feeling bolder because they know that Russia owes them. So, Iran may misconstrue the situation and think that this is an invitation for them to build their own nuclear weapons because they’ve been moving closer and closer to that threshold. The fear is that if Iran develops nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar may rethink, and what we call a proliferation cascade may occur. That I think would be terrible for security and stability.
I think this is why the US has realigned closer to Saudi Arabia. We realise that although we may disagree with them on domestic policy, we have to work much closer with them to take care of their security concerns so that they don’t seek nuclear weapons.
So, I think, in the West, certainly, we should remain concerned about countries developing nuclear weapons, and we should work together to try to prevent it. It should be in Russia and China’s interest to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, too. I also think this is an issue where Russia and China are divided because I don’t think China wants to see more countries in their region, like South Korea and Japan, having nuclear weapons. That would be a huge threat to China. So, this may be an issue in the future where we can split Russia and China on policy.
It’ll always be a concern. But for any of the US friends who are thinking about it, you should align yourself with the United States rather than build your own nuclear weapons.
But we should consider the very real possibility that Donald Trump would be elected president of the US and deliver on his promises to limit America’s participation in transatlantic security. Would European nuclear deterrence be effective without the US?
There’s a term in international security, called the indivisibility of security. This term has been abused and misapplied over the past 30 years, especially at the end of the Cold War. They started using it for everything. The original use of that term was about the indivisibility of the security of Europe and North America, meaning that Europe cannot be secure without North America, and North America is ultimately not secure without Europe. I think that still holds true today.
If Trump wins, I hope he will realise that even people in his own party don’t like his policy. Ultimately, even Republicans revolted when Trump met with Putin in Helsinki with no note-taker. That was too far for even his own party. Hopefully, that will continue, and people will say to him, “You can’t trust Putin and you can’t leave Europe alone”.
There are also a lot of people close to him who believe that China is a big threat. If China is a big threat, we need as many allies in Asia as possible in order to counteract that because we can’t do it all by ourselves. And if we leave Europe to itself, China will see that as an opportunity as well. We will need Europe as well to effectively counteract China. So that’s my hope.
But to your real question about European deterrence… The reason I mentioned indivisibility of security is because no, there is no European nuclear deterrent. It needs to be the US, the UK, and France working together through NATO to defend Europe and North America and to secure peace.
France, as great an ally as they are, does not believe conceptually in extended deterrence. Macron is trying to figure out some more flexibility than he’s had in the past because he does see the risk if the US pulls out. But ultimately, Lithuania would have to be able to say to France, “We need to know the conditions under which you will protect us”. [...] And France is not there.
Then what? The UK? I love my British colleagues, but they have been underfunding their military tremendously. Fortunately, Labour, which I think is going to win the election on July 4th, has pledged to protect the Trident (the programme for the development, procurement and operation of nuclear weapons in the United Kingdom). So, they will continue to have submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and in case of war, the UK pledges those nuclear weapons to the defence of NATO. That’s a good deterrent, but that’s 200-something nuclear weapons, which are not tremendously effective against 5,000 Russian nuclear weapons.
So, should another country build nuclear weapons? Again, we go back to what I was saying before. I hope not. Imagine if Lithuania wanted to build nuclear weapons, you’d have to pull out of the NPT, which means all of the nuclear power cooperation, any energy derived from nuclear weapons, any benefit from nuclear power would have to be taken away from Lithuania under the treaty. The economic consequences and the international isolation that this would cause would be bad for the country.
But at the same time, if the US had pulled out of NATO, then there’s a much bigger problem. That would be an ultimate victory for Russia. And I do think you would have to see some sort of new arrangement. I would hope that it would not entail another country building nuclear weapons. I think the right answer would be more of a common NATO sharing to help the UK bolster their deterrent because ultimately the UK should diversify its arsenal in the future. It shouldn’t just be subs, they should also have air-launched cruise missiles and possibly sea-launched cruise missiles, other types of nuclear delivery systems. So, if you had common NATO funding to help the UK with that, no country would have to violate the NPT treaty.
There’s precedent for this because, in the old days, there used to be two Western security organisations in Europe – NATO and the Western European Union. And Western European Union actually had conversations about arms control and nuclear weapons. So, you could either keep NATO or have some sort of hybrid. You could see some new arrangements. [...]
In the war in Ukraine, Russia has been using nuclear threats repeatedly, usually in response to the West boosting its support for Ukraine. Do you think it is effective in forcing the West to limit or re-evaluate its support for Ukraine?
Let’s start with the US. In the Biden administration, there are a couple of people close to Biden who are very panicky about Russian nuclear threats. There are others who are much smarter, level-headed, and able to deal with such threats.
But I think you put it backwards. I think what Russia does is it has this constant threat, and that has caused inhibition in the West. Sometimes, these threats are not connected to anything. Sometimes, they just say, let’s do something crazy to scare the West, such as snap exercises, different military manoeuvres, nuclear drills, all these kinds of things.
So, Putin would plan to do this, and then NATO would do something, and he’d say that it’s because of that. Putin is nothing if not incredibly “intellectually flexible”. [...] So, everything has as many purposes as necessary, and then whatever purpose catches best is the one that Putin had supposedly planned all along.
There are the people who say Putin is playing six-dimensional chess. He’s playing checkers all the time. He’s very tactical. He’s doing things that he knows he needs to do and then he’s saying that this is because the Vilnius Summit decided this, this, and this. But we know it’s not.
This was successful in the run-up to Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Because in the run-up to the conflict and then once the conflict started, the West already was taking things off the table, listing things they wouldn’t do. That was the success of years of Russian pressure, threats, and escalation that created inhibition.
Back in the Soviet days, they called it reflexive control. Let’s say, on the right side, there are options that I really don’t want you to do. In the centre, there are options I don’t mind if you do. And on the left, there are options I would much rather you do. So as a bad guy, how can I get you to shift your decision set so that you’re only thinking of the things that I want you to do? How can I shape your decisions so that you’re not even thinking of the obvious choice that would help you win and me lose? Well, if I threaten you enough, then you take it off the table.
So, throughout this conflict, we have inhibited ourselves from doing things that would obviously help. You think, for example, about allowing the naval passage out of Ukraine for grain and things like that. Russia was threatening, but NATO said finally, let’s just do it and we do it, and Russia doesn’t do anything.
This is what we call nuclear coercion. Deterrence is preventing direct attacks on Russia and it is working perfectly. Coercion has not worked perfectly.
Again, I use Nixon as an example. The most menacing nuclear move the United States ever took was in 1970. And this was a plan by Nixon that he worked up with Kissinger and he called it the madman theory. What he said was, that if I make the North Vietnamese and the Soviets scared that I’m going to use nuclear weapons against North Vietnam, then either Vietnam will ask for peace, or the Soviets will force the North Vietnamese to ask for peace. And guess what? It didn’t work because neither the Soviets nor the North Vietnamese fundamentally believed that the US would use nuclear weapons in the conflict.
So, Nixon tried it, and it didn’t work. Putin also tried it because we have taught him since he took office in 2000, right until 2022 that if he threatens us, we will back down or we will change our behaviour. [...] Once the conflict really started to go better for Ukraine, they needed battle tanks, and we didn’t give it to them. We finally gave it to them, but Russia has managed to buy time, and by buying time they’re able to dig in defensive lines which made the counteroffensive fail.
So, has it worked? Yes, but it works for a limited duration and it erodes over time, so eventually we get to the right answer. [...]
It’s time-limited in how it works because ultimately, I do not believe that Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. I believe that President Xi and President Modi, surprisingly, played a role, because a year ago, when Russia was really ramping up the nuclear threats, Xi and Modi both said separately that we don’t want to see nuclear weapons introduced into this conflict. They weren’t talking about the US or Ukraine but about Russia, which is extraordinary. And I think even Putin realised he had gone too far at that point. [...]
Reportedly, Russia has now also moved its tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, so closer to Lithuania and NATO territory. What does it mean for our security situation? And how should NATO respond, if at all?
This is a topic I have researched and written about a lot. Tactically speaking, putting nuclear weapons at Lida Air Force Base, all the way in the west of Belarus near Poland, provides Russia through Belarusian delivery systems of another angle to penetrate NATO defences. NATO’s been focused on Kaliningrad, Kola, Black Sea, but that central front is kind of a soft underbelly. [...]
To me, tactically, that means that NATO needs integrated air and missile defence in a place where we didn’t really think about it very much. That becomes an urgent need to shift integrated air and missile defence to a new angle. It changes the geometry of the battlefield strategically.
Do we need to respond? We’ve needed to re-diversify our nuclear platforms for a long time. Ballistic missiles of the UK and France, the air-launched cruise missiles of France, B61, and the US Strategic Fleet are good, but NATO, I think, needs air-launched cruise missiles with nuclear capability. Some say that would be really hard, but it’s doing the hard things that would deter Russia.
I think we need to see the Typhon – the system that the US put in the Philippines that can launch the SM-6 and the Tomahawk – in Europe. But I also think we need to see Europeans owning ground-launched missiles, ground-to-ground missiles, and some of them need to have nuclear capability.
There are people, who say, we don’t want that arms race. Well, Russia has already raced down that path and so has China. So, what are we waiting for? If there’s a way to strengthen deterrence against Russia that prevents war in Europe, then I am for it.
So that would be the vertical proliferation you were talking about.
But I don’t think, for instance, that putting nuclear weapons in Poland makes Poland safer. I think what that does is it provides Russia with its first target. As a battlefield commander, I would rather have them further away from Russia’s borders. Then in a conflict, I could move them anywhere, rather than have them stored really close to the front line where they’re going to get blown up on day one.
I understand politically why Poland or Lithuania would want nukes on their ground. But quite frankly, what would make Lithuania safer and provide a more credible and lasting benefit to it would be the permanent stationing of US forces with families, like we do in Germany. That would provide a cultural, personal, and generational bond between Lithuania and the United States. Then, we would defend Lithuania with our lives because it is us.
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