NATO negotiates to put nuclear weapons on standby
17 June 2024 12:06
NATO members are negotiating the deployment of more nuclear weapons in the face of the growing threat from Russia and China. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said this in an interview with The Telegraph, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports
The NATO Secretary General noted that the bloc should show the world “its nuclear arsenal” in order to send a “direct message” to its enemies. Stoltenberg stressed that discussions and consultations are underway among members, including on removing missiles from storage and putting them on standby. He called for the use of transparency as a deterrent.
“I will not go into operational details about how many nuclear warheads should be operational and which should be stored, but we need to consult on these issues. This is exactly what we are doing,” he said,
– he said.
The NATO official stressed that China is investing a significant amount of its money in modern weapons, including a nuclear arsenal that “will grow to 1,000 warheads by 2030”.
He noted that NATO’s goal is a world without nuclear weapons, but as long as nuclear weapons exist, it must remain a nuclear alliance because a world where Russia, China and North Korea have nuclear weapons and NATO does not is dangerous.
“It means that in the not too distant future, NATO could face something it has never faced before, and that is two potential adversaries with nuclear weapons – China and Russia. Of course, this has consequences,”
– said the head of the alliance.
It should be noted that in May, Poland officially requested the deployment of US nuclear weapons from the United States by applying for participation in the Nuclear Sharing programme.
How many nuclear weapons does NATO have?
According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and Wikipedia, as of 2024, NATO’s nuclear arsenal mainly consists of nuclear weapons belonging to three member states: The United States, the United Kingdom and France. In total, these countries have about 6,100 nuclear warheads.
The United States has about 3,708 nuclear warheads in its arsenal, of which approximately 1,770 are deployed and 1,938 are in reserve. It is worth noting that the United States maintains about 100 non-strategic nuclear weapons deployed in Europe at several NATO bases, which is a significant part of NATO’s deterrence strategy.
The United Kingdom has approximately 225 nuclear warheads, of which about 120 are operationally ready for deployment on Vanguard-class submarines.
France has about 290 nuclear warheads, mostly deployed on its submarines and partly on air-launched cruise missiles.
