Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, changed Finland’s security environment dramatically. As Russia’s “mask came off”, wording used by President Sauli Niinistö, Finland changed course and aimed instantly for the enhanced security provided by NATO. The application for membership in the Atlantic Alliance was swiftly drafted together with Sweden, which initially was more doubtful about abandoning two centuries of neutrality and non-alignment. Both countries got invitations to join NATO. Finland joined on April 4, 2023, and Sweden after prolonged obstruction by Türkie and Hungary, on March 7, 2024.
Maximum security sought by a clear majority of the Finnish people obviously includes NATO’s nuclear “umbrella”, i.e. protection against nuclear threats and extorsion, and is provided primarily by the United States. Nuclear weapons are a core component of NATO’s overall capabilities for deterrence and defence, alongside conventional and missile defence forces. That said, NATO is committed to arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation, but as long as nuclear weapons exist, it will remain a nuclear alliance.
Today there are about 100 U.S. tactical nuclear bombs at six bases in five NATO member countries, as part of “nuclear sharing” agreements between the U.S. and these NATO member states (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Türkie). The UK and France have their own nuclear forces. Nuclear weapons storage refurbishment is under way at RAF Lakenheath Air Force Base in Britain which is operated by US Air Force and makes reintroduction of U.S. nuclear weapons possible in UK too, more precisely B61-12 nuclear bombs to be carried by US Air Force dual-capable F-35 A Lightning II stealth fighters. The aircraft was recently certified for operational nuclear role.
When discussing NATO and US nuclear policy it is prudent to keep in mind – as stated in NATO’s Strategic Concept 2022 – that the strategic nuclear forces of the Alliance, particularly those of the United States, are the supreme guarantee of the security of the Alliance.
This reflects the US attitude towards nuclear weapons in general as describing them as strategic or non-strategic has become increasingly irrelevant.
The U.S. – Soviet/Russian Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) ceased to exist in August 2019. The last remaining bilateral nuclear arms control treaty in force between the USA and Russia is the New START Treaty, which covers long-range strategic forces. It expires on February 5, 2026, and as the treaty is unlikely to be extended, definitions of nuclear weapons by range seem to become irrelevant.
“I really don’t like it when people call them battlefield weapons or tactical weapons. They’re not. They are strategic weapons (italics added), and the United States will always look at the employment of a nuclear weapon as a strategic attack” (italics added), Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John E. Hyten said in February 2020 (https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/25/politics/us-new-nuclear-weapons/index.html).
For NATO, the independent strategic nuclear forces of the United Kingdom and France have a deterrent role of their own and contribute significantly to the overall security of the Alliance. France, however, doesn’t participate in NATO’s nuclear planning and hence a possible decision to provide NATO allied countries with French nuclear support is taken by France alone.
NATO’s nuclear deterrence posture also relies on the United States’ nuclear weapons forward deployed in Europe and the contributions of Allies concerned. National contributions of dual-capable aircraft to NATO’s nuclear deterrence mission remain central to this effort.
To sum up, while the U.S. strategic nuclear forces remain solely under U.S. command, they play a far more important role for the deterrence of the Alliance than the rather small amount of free-falling U.S. nuclear gravity bombs deployed in Europe.
When the new U.S. strategic dual-capable stealth bomber B-21 Raider enters service in the late 2020s, it will boost conventional and nuclear deterrence significantly. B-21 can carry long range nuclear and conventional cruise missiles as well as bombs, which upsets the adversaries’ defenses as they can’t know from what direction to expect an attack. In addition, “low-yield” submarine-launched Trident D5 missiles contribute to the Allied deterrence effort and these strategic weapons offset the almost tenfold Russian numerical superiority in non-strategic nuclear weapons. There is also a possibility that U.S. nuclear attack submarines may get new nuclear-tipped long range cruise missiles. The U.S. Congress supports it, while the Biden administration does not.
It is, however, also important to understand that the USA has no plans to reintroduce ground-based nuclear weapons. During the end of President Gorbachev’s era and the beginning of President Yeltsin’s era President George H.W. Bush’s administration undertook massive mutual nuclear weapons reductions, including unilateral non-strategic weapons reductions on a legally non-binding basis.
Expectations were high and the assumption was that USA and Russia would proceed in parallel. In the end, non-strategic nuclear weapons were eliminated altogether from all US services, except for the US Air Force. It is important to understand that US Army has been non-nuclear for more than a generation and that there are no plans to change that status.
Unfortunately, this promising development ended abruptly as Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia at the turn of the century. Russia embarked aggressively on a path to take back what was lost in the nuclear field, strengthening all services as nuclear-capable and nullifying the INF Treaty. Russia shaped its nuclear forces into a powerful political tool to advance its political agenda of restoration of the lost Russian empire.
Nuclear weapons scholars soon discovered what was going on in Russia, but western leaders, still intoxicated by the peace dividend after the end of the Cold War, didn’t listen. The US continued to de-emphasize the reliance on nuclear weapons with implications for its own security and that of its allies.
Russian military thought and doctrine related to Russia’s non-strategic nuclear weapons is very professionally described in IISS nuclear expert William Alberque’s recent report (https://www.iiss.org/research-paper/2024/01/russian-military-thought-and-doctrine-related-to-nonstrategic-nuclear-weapons/). It is highly recommended. Likewise, Dr. Ian Anthony at the Swedish Defence Research Agency FOI recently published an important paper about the nuclear dimension of strengthening deterrence (https://www.foi.se/rest-api/report/FOI Memo 8432). Its focus is on the United States.
After Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, NATO now struggles to get its act together. Former Swedish Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Carl Bildt’s gave a blunt assessment of the state of the Alliance at the Lennart Meri Conference in Tallinn in August 2021 (https://lmc.icds.ee/lennart-meri-lecture/). “NATO will hopefully survive Afghanistan – out of area has suddenly got out of business” [italics added], Mr. Bildt said with a reference to NATO’s sudden, chaotic retreat from Afghanistan. It was also a reminder of NATO’s choice after the Cold War to focus on crisis management or to become irrelevant. Given former US President Donald Trump’s negative attitude towards NATO, the future of the Alliance is uncertain at least for now.
NATO will have to deal with multiple very hard challenges in the coming years, including in the nuclear domain. Concerns about the credibility of the ultimate U.S. protection of its allies has triggered a debate about the possible need for a more robust European nuclear capability to deal with Russia’s nuclear threat. The scene has changed abruptly, as a former NATO Supreme Commander said not many years ago that the best way of ending a meeting in Brussels was to bring up the subject of nuclear weapons.
As new members in the very secretive NATO Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) Finland and Sweden could play the role of new members with a legitimate right to know. NATO needs a serious discussion and the first basic question to ask could be the following: “Could you tell us under what conditions NATO would use nuclear weapons?”
Finland and Sweden joined NATO, including its nuclear dimension, without preconditions. Both countries are expected to participate actively in NATO nuclear planning and exercises in a supportive non-nuclear role. The question of placing nuclear weapons on Finnish soil as well as their transit through Finland has, however, been debated in Finland. The current Finnish law on nuclear energy from 1987 simply prohibits that and the law which will be updated may have to be revised with regard to nuclear weapons. The current law differs on this account from that of other Nordic countries.
What has been lost in the internal Finnish debate is the motive for the wording in the 1987 law. It was to establish a legal barrier against introduction of Soviet nuclear weapons on Finnish soil. Not surprisingly, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, expressed a direct warning and threat to Finland, should this legislation now be revised (https://x.com/NatalkaKyiv/status/1765487992582312371).
Sweden (FOI) never abandoned serious nuclear weapons related research. It is a very useful asset for NATO as well as for Finland, which will have to resuscitate research in this field to be able to make a difference.
Stefan Forss
Professor, Physicist and Docent
Finnish National Defence University
Finland
