Nuclear security

The Old Arguments AboutUS Nukes in Europe Aren’t Working. Here’s A New Approach.

Opponents of the U.S. nuclear arsenal in Europe—currently some 200 tactical weapons—have long argued that it has outlived its Cold War utility and become an invitation to nuclear proliferation, a drain on tight budgets, and a pathway to conflict escalation. These are indeed important reasons to recall these weapons—but so far, these arguments haven’t sparked change. If anti-TNW advocates are to succeed, we’ll need a new approach.

Perhaps this approach is already present in the anti-nuclear community: humanitarianism. While traditional anti-nuclear advocacy focuses on the strategic futility of nuclear weapons—long the centerpiece of the now-stagnated TNW debates at NATO—movements such as Global Zero and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) tend to emphasize a different line of argument. These activists want “the use of nuclear weapons [to] be declared a crime against humanity” and have pushed for ethics and international humanitarian law to take more central roles in discussions about nuclear weapons.