Hoffentlich bauen die Schwaben nie eine Atombombe, weil irgendein MinischderprΓ€sident wΓΌrde sagen "Etz ham mer se bezahlt, etz werf mer se au ab".
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Guys, have a kid, buy a house. Smile on your faces. Everything is going to be good.
You need to feel like you have something for them to be able to rip it away.
Drop it ! Wherever it's dropped is probably fine now
The article advocates/answers with infrastructure should be prepared so it can be purposed if it should ever be necessary.
There is, however, a third option: nuclear hedging. In this model, a country does not develop nuclear weapons outright but instead builds the technological capacity to produce them if ever deemed necessary.
Most of the comments here seem to discuss the headline instead - whether it should equip.
Germany maintains the uranium enrichment plant and a the ability to turn that into nuclear fuel. That is what is needed to build a simple uranium based nuclear weapon.
That is why Germany set up nuclear power plants, as they were always meant to finance and develop those facilities. Since they are now esteblished there is no reason to keep the power plants around. They are of the wrong type anyway, as they produce very little plutonium, which is the other way of producing nuclear weapons. However Germany still has quite a few institutions being able to built nuclear reactors, if need be.
That is also why Germany was fine with US nuclear weapons. Nobody wanted to see Germany have nukes themself, but Germany. Hence that deal. However Germany always had very detailed plans to built nukes, if need be. We are talking about having nukes within a few months, if really pushed hard.
This is what Germany has been doing for decades with its civil nuclear program, but it turned out to be an prohibitively expensive bondoggle and all the nuclear plants have been shut down now.
I just want to point out, that we are really talking about building nukes again in 2025.
Well, I'm not a big fan of nuclear proliferation but Ukraine gave up theirs and look what happened...
As long as we have imperialistic authoritarian world leaders, we will need ways to keep them at bay, and nuclear deterrence is probably the best one unfortunately...
I wonder if Putin would have bet on them not being used and attacked anyway.
Just like Putin has not used any nuke, there's a huge deterrent to use them at all.
I could definitely see Putin making calculated decisions like that.
Of course Ukraine would have had a stronger stand with them either way.
There was a sincere risk of Russia using nuclear weapons earlier in the conflict, around the winter of 2022/2023 when the first major Russian mobilization of 600k failed to achieve the desired outcomes and the North Western front started to collapse. The released intelligence info put it at about 50/50.
This is why, at the time, the Biden administration made several clearly coded messages/announcements that nuclear weapons usage in Ukraine would result in an overwhelming conventional retaliation that would remove Russian military capability from the board. It's also part of the reason nations were so slow to provide advanced support capabilities. There was a fear (justified, imo) that immediately opening the floodgates and giving Ukraine tanks, jets, advanced missiles, and using those missiles to strike deep in Russian territory would result in usage of nuclear weapons. It still is a risk, honestly. If Ukraine started doing heavy damage to Moscow, there's a real chance Putin might decide to flip the table over rather than lose the game.
I must have missed that back then. Thank you for the context.
For sure, it wasn't super widely reported at the time. Nuclear weapons and foreign policy just happen to be "special interests" for me so I tend to follow things like that.
I would expect the blowback for using nukes in defense of your sovereign territory to be a lot less than for conquering another country.
But you can also see the hesitance from european leaders due to his nukes
Yes. The Budapest memo and the US strategic backflip has proved non nuclear powers are deeply at risk.
They just had an election where the second most popular party was an extreme-right-wing pack of lunatics. What happens when they win the next election?
You cannot afford to have nuclear weapons when you can't be sure who's going to have control of them.
This logic assumes that the AFD wouldn't themselves obtain nukes upon coming to power, joining other dictatorships that have them.
At some point you have to wonder how democracy would stand globally if only those who oppose democracy have deterrence.
If Putin and the USA already have them, isn't that hypothetical too far off when assessing risk?
There's a strong counter movement to the right. I'd rather have a strong deterrent against Putin than not. It's pretty obvious to me what the more immediate and more realistic risk is.
Everyone seems so willing to break the Non Proliferation Treaty nowadays, it's scary
Non proliferation was possible because of nuclear security guarantees by the US. Those are now worthless.
Pandora's box is open. Thanks Putin. Thanks Trump. EU can't do nothing... We're heading to more war and disorder either way. Not only more new nukes, also higher chances of them being used again which is even more scary.
No need to break it. The treaty can be left within 90 days after giving a notice with a reason. Given that building nuclear weapons takes some time, that seems very possible.
Everyone seems so willing to break the Non Proliferation Treaty nowadays, itβs scary
Non-Proliferation is based on the promise of nuclear powers to defend those who don't have nukes. Since this promise is out of the window thanks to Trump, proliferation is the logical consequence.
I really would like that everybody who is proposing a german nuclear bomb would also explain where Germany should test its new bomb. Bavaria? Mecklenburg? Erzgebirge?
Even untested ones would act as a deterrence. Not to the same effect, but almost.
I propose Saxony /s
explain where Germany should test its new bomb
Mar-a-Lago