Berlin Germany
Germany is debating whether or not to continue to house and transport US nuclear weapons on its territory, an issue that has caused a stir within the government of Angela Merkel.
It was one of the two presidents of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), a governing partner of the conservatives of the chancellor, who raised the hare.
“I defend a clear position against parking, the making available and, of course, the use of nuclear weapons,” said Norbert Walter-Borjans in the newspaper. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung this Sunday.
Another Social Democratic official, Rolf Mützenich, president of the parliamentary group, considered that “nuclear weapons on German soil do not reinforce our security, quite the contrary.”
“It is time for Germany to rule out continuing to host them in the future,” he added Sunday in the newspaper. Tagesspiegel.
– Pacifism –
After a series of electoral disasters, the Social Democratic party last year opted for a left turn and chose a leadership accordingly.
Now, he hopes to convince the most left wing of the German electorate defending a pacifist and anti-nuclear line, and to go back in the polls, which currently attribute no more than 16% to him in voting intention, compared to 38% credited to the conservatives.
The offensive is focused on the project to renew the German fleet of Tornado fighter jets, which will soon become obsolete, and whose mission is to transport US nuclear bombs within the framework of the NATO deterrence force in Europe.
The SPD co-chair stated that he opposed “the purchase of replacement fighters to carry nuclear bombs,” which would mean a radical break in German security policy, which rests under the US nuclear umbrella.
To replace the Tornadoes, Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the conservative, plans to buy 45 US F-18s destined for the transport of US nuclear weapons, in addition to 93 Eurofighters, not designed for that mission.
– “Nirvana” –
Among Angela Merkel’s conservatives, the idea launched by the Social Democrats caused outrage. “The SPD is evolving in the middle of Nirvana in terms of security policy,” said one of its deputies, Patrick Sensburg, in the newspaper Handelsblatt.
According to him, the Social Democrats forget “that US nuclear weapons serve, first of all, for our protection” and, if they continue along the same path, “our international partners will doubt the ability of Germany to fulfill its role in the future, within the transatlantic security scheme. “
The United States has some 150 nuclear bombs under NATO, which it stores in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany.
Their presence has long generated discord among Germans, especially during the Euro-missile crisis of the 1980s in Europe, in the context of the Cold War.
Hundreds of thousands of Germans demonstrated at that time against NATO’s deployment of Pershing II missiles, in front of the Soviet Union’s new SS20 missiles in the east.
That period shaped the pacifist mentality of much of German opinion and for a long time had its main political defender in the Greens.
However, that party has adopted more centrist positions on security issues in recent years, as it has progressed in the polls and outlined itself as a possible partner of the conservatives in a future government.
The Social Democrats, on the other hand, in view of a probable return to the opposition bench after the elections in late 2021, are moving closer to the radical left of Die Linke.
Thus, “the conservatives deferred any final decision on the replacement of the Tornadoes until the next legislature, because they know that by then they will no longer be tied to the Social Democrats,” said a diplomat close to the case.
– .
