Why does Poland want nukes?

Nukes are becoming a big issue for Poland. One way or another, both the Polish president and prime minister want their country to host tactical nuclear weapons as a deterrent to President Putin’s Russia. In the latest, but by no means the first, statement on this question, President Andrzej Duda has revealed he recently discussed locating American tactical nukes in Poland with Keith Kellogg, the US special envoy for Ukraine. In an interview with the Financial Times, Duda said:”I think it’s not only that the time has come but that it would be safer if those weapons were already here.” At the same time, Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister and former President of the European Council, has indicated an interest in Poland developing its own nuclear weapons as well as building an army of half a million soldiers to stand up to potential Russian aggression in the future. Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, nuclear rhetoric has become increasingly escalatory. Putin has threatened to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, most recently justifying such use if long-range conventionally-armed missiles supplied by a western nuclear power - the US, France or the UK - posed an existential threat to Russia. (Tactical nukes are short-range and designed for the battlefield, as opposed to strategic weapons with a range of thousands of miles and capable of annihilating cities). Putin, in making his case for why he invaded Ukraine, has blamed Nato for its expansion programme which absorbed all the eastern European countries that were formerly part of the Warsaw Pact. Two of his demands for a resolution to the war across Russia’s border is for Ukraine to be demilitarised and barred from ever joining the western alliance. This is where the nukes issue comes in. Poland has adopted the most ambitious and, from the Kremlin’s point of view, most confrontational approach vis a vis Russia with a number of significant proposals to Washington: building a base in the country for the permanent deployment of a US armoured division, hosting an American Aegis Ashore missile defence system (operational since December 2023 at Redzikowo in northern Poland), and, now, housing US air-launched tactical nukes. The sense of urgency in the Polish president’s oft-repeated plea for American nukes gathered pace after Putin, without so much as a by-your-leave, deployed Russian tactical weapons to Belarus in the summer of 2023. Belarus is Russia’s strongest and most loyal ally which provided an additional launch pad for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. When Poland first raised the possibility of deploying US tactical nukes on Polish territory, President Joe Biden reacted without enthusiasm. His whole approach was not to make any move that might seem dangerously escalatory. This was why he delayed for so long sending long-range missiles to Ukraine and then, even when he changed his mind, imposing a limited use of them for striking targets inside Russia. President Trump’s strategy is focused on ending the war and it seems unlikely he would announce he is contemplating installing tactical nuclear weapons in Poland as an added incentive to Putin to agree a peace settlement. In any case, it’s President Duda advocating this proposal, it’s not the official policy of Prime Minister Tusk’s government. As a member of Nato, Poland is represented on the alliance’s Nuclear Planning Group. Warsaw is, therefore, signed up to the nuclear-sharing strategy under which the US locates bomber-armed tactical nuclear weapons at installations throughout Europe. An estimated 100-150 US B61 nuclear bombs are stored in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. There is one nuclear base in each country, with the exception of Italy which has two. Under current policy, enshrined in commitments made to Moscow in the Nato-Russia Founding Act, signed in Paris on 27 May, 1997, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the alliance has pledged it has “no intention, no plan and no reason” to deploy nuclear weapons on the territories of member states which joined the alliance after 1997. Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were the first former Warsaw Pact countries to be accepted in the alliance, in 1999. They were followed five years later by another seven countries, including the three Baltic nations of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. Allowing Poland to host US tactical nuclear weapons would abrogate that commitment, although the invasion of Ukraine and the fears of further Russian aggression in eastern Europe, have potentially created a new “reason” for expanding or revising Nato’s nuclear-sharing strategy. Sixty-three years ago, the attempt by the Soviet Union to station medium- and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles in Cuba led to the gravest confrontation between Moscow and Washington. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis has served as a benchmark ever since for the risks posed by nuclear brinkmanship. Today, the confrontation with Moscow is not on such a world-threatening scale, in spite of Trump’s warning to Kyiv that it’s potentially provoking a Third World War. However, for Poland, on the frontline, the role of nuclear weapons as a deterrent has increasingly become a highly personal issue.