With his threat to no longer reliably support European NATO partners in the event of a Russian attack, Donald Trump has sparked a debate in Germany about the need for its own nuclear weapons. What do you think of it? Before I answer that, we need to look at the big picture. To do this, you need to remember three numbers: 78 – 78 – 9.
What do they stand for? Firstly: more than 78 years without a war between the great powers. This is an unprecedentedly long peace, a great achievement of statesmanship, but a fragile one. Unlikely to be maintained through the next generation. We should be grateful for this, but not take this peace for granted.
And the second 78 … stands for a good 78 years since the use of nuclear weapons in war. That is also amazing. A crucial factor was that the United States and the Soviet Union had long faced each other under a doctrine of mutually assured destruction. Another was the major efforts to ensure the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. But at the end of the Second World War the odds were 1000:1 that things would turn out differently than they did.
That leaves 9. That is the number of states that have nuclear weapons. In 1963, after the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy assumed that there would be between 25 and 30 countries by the 1970s.
The idea that Germany should be number ten on this list is astonishing, isn’t it?
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