RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Deputy Editor, National Security and Foreign Policy
0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. Only nine nations in the world are known to possess their own nuclear weapons programs, three of which—the United States, the United Kingdom and France—are members of the NATO alliance.
But five more NATO states host U.S. nuclear weapons on their soil in line with the bloc's nuclear sharing program, an arrangement developed in the 1950s in a bid to counter the Soviet Union's conventional military superiority in Europe in the event that the Cold War erupted into full-scale conflict.
Today, these countries include Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. Each maintains a stockpile of B61 gravity bombs that can be fitted to a variety of aircraft deployed among NATO members, including variants of the F-15, F-16 and F-35 fighter aircraft, as well as the European Panavia Tornado.
And as European nations once again worry about potential escalation from Moscow as the Russia -Ukraine war enters a dangerous new phase, another NATO member, Poland , has entered into a fierce debate over whether or not to bring U.S. weapons of mass destruction onto its territory.
Following a meeting with Elbridge Colby, U.S. under secretary of defense for policy, on Thursday, Polish Deputy Defense Minister Pawel Zalewski was asked by reporters if Warsaw would seek to join the NATO nuclear sharing program. He responded, "No. I would like to say this very clearly and openly: Poland does not want nuclear warheads on its territory."
The comments, however, prompted a wave of criticism from figures aligned with President Karol Nawrocki, who leads the right-wing populist Law and Justice opposition party. On Friday, Nawrocki's International Policy Bureau chief, Marcin Przydacz, slammed Zalewski's remarks as "bizarre, absurd and completely inconsistent with what Poland has been saying so far and what the policy of the Polish state is."
"Poland also wants to have the presence of warheads on its territory," Przydacz said. "Today, there is no such infrastructure, but if we join the [nuclear-sharing] program, such infrastructure will have to be built."
Long overshadowed by traditional European powers such as France, Germany and the U.K., Poland has increasingly emerged as a military leader on the continent since becoming the first country to break with the communist Eastern Bloc in 1989, two years before the fall of the Soviet Union.
Poland now commands the third-largest army in NATO, behind only the U.S. and Turkey. It also devotes the largest share of its GDP to defense among allies, at 4.3 percent.
But Warsaw's impressive build-up has not left it immune to the spillover effects of the war in Ukraine, which Poland borders directly, along with Russia's Kaliningrad exclave and Moscow's ally, Belarus. Drones and missiles have crossed into Polish territory on several occasions since the beginning of the conflict in February 2022, most notably an incident last September in which Russia was blamed for the incursion of 19 drones onto Polish territory.
This year may prove even more precarious for Poland as the Kremlin looks to increase the pressure on NATO to counter slowing gains in Ukraine and Kyiv's costly campaign of long-range attacks against Russian gas infrastructure. Reports that Moscow may be planning to escalate in the form of a new mobilization or even operations on NATO soil were further fueled by a surprise visit by the CIA chief to the Russian capital earlier this week.
While Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed such speculation on Thursday as having "no basis in reality," officials in Warsaw remain on high alert. Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Radek Sikorski warned last month that Russia may pursue a "false flag operation" to justify direct action against a NATO member.
"Involving Poland in nuclear sharing would help convince Russia that the U.S. and NATO are seriously thinking about responding with nuclear weapons to nuclear attack on the Alliance’s eastern flank," Artur Kacprzyk, an analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs ' International Security Program, told Newsweek .
He argued that NATO's nuclear-sharing program's message of unity was undermined by the fact that no nations along the alliance's eastern flank directly across from Russia participated. Poland, in particular, he said, was "firmly in the crosshairs" of Russian Iskander short-range ballistic missile systems deployed to Kaliningrad and Belarus.
"Deploying nuclear weapons in Poland would be a particularly strong political signal from the U.S. and NATO, while also offering additional options for using U.S. nuclear bombs in Europe," Kacprzyk said. "When stationed closer to Russia they could be to strike deeper and faster, with lesser warning time for Russian air defense."
Among the primary reasons that Kacprzyk argued nuclear deterrence remained relevant even in an age of hybrid warfare tactics increasingly being attributed to Moscow was that "Russia relies on nuclear weapons as a cover for aggression," and has only "doubled down on nuclear intimidation" since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
Yet the public rift that has recently emerged among senior Polish officials indicates a lack of consensus on how far the nation was willing to go to shore up its defense.
Lukasz Kulesa, deputy head of research at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, acknowledged that Poland's full entry into the NATO nuclear-sharing pact would inevitably have consequences.
"Of course, Russia would criticize such a move and present it as 'proof' of U.S. and NATO’s aggressive intensions," Kulesa told Newsweek .
"Internally at NATO, some members states may question whether such forward deployment would not be too escalatory towards Russia, and whether it would be operationally justified...
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