Germany underscores commitment to US nuclear deterrence

Germany will continue to make an “appropriate contribution” to deterrent NATO nuclear capability, said federal government spokesman Steffen Seibert on Monday, after senior Social Democrats had demanded the removal of US bombs.

The United States reputedly has as many as 150 nuclear devices stored in Europe — at the Büchel air base in western Germany, in Belgium, in the Netherlands and in Italy — for carriage on warplanes, including aging German Tornados.

Read more: US set to upgrade controversial nukes stationed in Germany

Over the weekend, two senior Social Democrats — nominally in coalition with Merkel’s conservatives — Rolf Mützenich and Norbert Walter-Borjans called for nuclear removals from Büchel in the lead-up to federal elections due in 2021.

Replacement aircraft sought

Last month, Defence Minister and Merkel confidant Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer had floated a procurement package, foreseeing the replacement of the Tornadoes with US-made Boeing F-18 jets as well as Eurofighters.

The Boeings can carry US nuclear arms that the Airbus jets are not designed for.

Seibert on Monday said Germany, like NATO, envisaged a world without nuclear weapons, but in the meantime adhered to NATO’s nuclear deterrence concept, noting this was anchored in the Merkel coalition’s 2018 agreement.

“There are some nations that continue to regard nuclear weapons as a means of military conflict, and as long as this is the case, we believe that there is still a need to maintain nuclear deterrence,” said Seibert.

“In this context, the Federal Government will also ensure that an appropriate contribution to the preservation of these NATO capabilities is provided by Germany,” Seibert added without referring to Büchel or potential adversaries.

Read more: US military in Germany: What you need to know

Do not strengthen security

Mützenich, the Social Democrats’ (SPD) parliamentary leader in the Bundestag, had told the Tagesspiegel newspaper: “It is time Germany ruled out them [US nuclear weapons] being stationed here in future.”

“Nuclear arms on German soil do not strengthen our security, quite the contrary,” said Mützenich.

Walter-Borjans, who co-chairs the SPD nationwide told Sunday’s Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper he was against “buying replacement fighters to transport nuclear bombs.”

“My position is clear against their being stationed [in Germany], being made available and of course the use of nuclear arms.”

Reiterating official coalition policy, a spokesman for Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, himself a SPD member, said Germany stood by US weapons stationing based on the understanding that this could only change through disarmament negotiations.

Lingering Cold War issue

At the height of Cold War in the 1980s hundreds of thousands of Germans demonstrated against the deployment of US Pershing missiles in Europe during a standoff with the Soviet Union armed with SS20 intermediate range ballistic missiles.

• 40 years of German anti-nuclear action

  A movement is born

  Germany’s anti nuclear movement got its start in the early 1970s, when protestors came out in force against plans for a nuclear power plant at Wyhl, close to the French border. Police were accused of using unnecessary force against the peaceful demonstrations. But the activists ultimately won, and plans for the Wyhl power station were scrapped in 1975.

• 40 years of German anti-nuclear action

  Civil disobedience

  Following the success of civil disobedience in Wyhl, similar protests were held in Brokdorf and Kalkar in the late 70s. Though they failed to prevent reactors being built, they proved that the anti-nuclear movement was a growing force.

• 40 years of German anti-nuclear action

  No to nuclear waste

  Gorleben has seen fierce protest against the nuclear industry ever since plans to store nuclear waste in a disused salt mine there were first announced in 1977. The site is a sparsely populated area close to the then-border with East Germany. Yet locals quickly showed they weren’t going to accept radioactive material close to their homes without a fight.

• 40 years of German anti-nuclear action

  People power

  From the beginning, the German anti-nuclear movement brought together church organizations, farmers and concerned local residents – along with student activists, academics, and peace protestors who saw a link between nuclear power and the atom bomb. Being at the frontline of the Cold War meant the threat of nuclear war loomed large in many German minds.

• 40 years of German anti-nuclear action

  Breaking into mainstream politics

  In the late 70s, anti-nuclear activists joined with other environment and social justice campaigners to form the Green Party. Today, this is a major force in German politics and probably the most powerful Green Party in the world. They won their first seats in the German federal parliament in 1983.

• 40 years of German anti-nuclear action

  Worst fears realized

  In 1986, a reactor meltdown hundreds of miles away in Ukraine hardened public opinion against nuclear power in Germany. The Chernobyl disaster released radioactive fallout across Europe. In Germany, people were warned not to drink milk, eat fresh meat or let children play on playgrounds, where the sand might have been contaminated.

• 40 years of German anti-nuclear action

  End to nuclear becomes law

  In 1998, the Green Party came into German federal government, as the junior partner in a coalition with the Social Democrats. In 2002, the “red-green” government passed a law banning new nuclear power plants and limiting the lives of existing plants so that the last would be switched off in 2022.

• 40 years of German anti-nuclear action

  Keeping the pressure up

  Even with an end to nuclear power finally in sight, the anti-nuclear movement still had plenty to protest about. Many activists, including in the Green Party (with leaders Jürgen Tritten and Claudia Roth pictured above in Berlin in 2009) wanted nuclear power phased out far faster. Meanwhile, the German movement continued to join international calls for a global end to nuclear power.

• 40 years of German anti-nuclear action

  Stop that train

  Then there was still the question of what to do with nuclear waste. By 1995, containers of radioactive material were coming back from reprocessing abroad for storage at Gorleben. Over the years, transport of these “castors” has regularly been met with mass protests, including clashes with police.

• 40 years of German anti-nuclear action

  New lease of life for nuclear

  Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party had always opposed the law limiting the life of Germany’s nuclear power plants – so after the party came to power in 2009, it effectively scrapped it by prolonging the lives of power plants – a major setback for the anti-nuclear movement.

• 40 years of German anti-nuclear action

  Fukushima changes everything

  In 201,1 the meltdown of a Japanese nuclear reactor saw Merkel’s government make a rapid about-face. Within days of the Fukushima disaster, it passed a law to shut down the last of Germany’s nuclear power plants by 2022. The phase-out was back on, and eight reactors were shut down that same year.

• 40 years of German anti-nuclear action

  The fight goes on

  Since the grassroots action of the 70s, Germany’s anti-nuclear movement has seen the country commit to ditching nuclear altogether. It’s also helped push forward a shift to renewables, making Germany an international example in the fight against climate change. But the protests go on. This week, activists stopped the first boat carrying nuclear waste.

  Author: Ruby Russell

Reacting to the calls by Mützenich and Walter-Borjan, Patrick Sensberg of Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) warned “our international partners will doubt Germany’s ability to fulfil its future role with the transatlantic security apparatus.”

“The SPD is in total nirvana about security policy,” asserted Sensberg, adding that American nuclear weapons “serve above all to protect us.”

ipj/aw (AFP, dpa, Reuters)

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