Do Germany and the Netherlands want to say goodbye to US nuclear weapons?

Abstract

Three decades after the end of the Cold War, the United States still deploys about 100 nuclear weapons in Europe under NATO's nuclear sharing policy. Two of the hosting states, Germany and the Netherlands, are now debating the prospective withdrawal of these weapons from their territory. This article presents the findings of a recent public opinion poll in the two countries, where German and the Dutch citizens expressed their views on the US withdrawal. Given the changing political landscape in these two countries, public support for these policies is a pertinent aspect of the political decisions over the future of US nuclear weapons in Europe.

Elite-Public Gaps in Attitudes to Nuclear Weapons: New Evidence from a Survey of German Citizens and Parliamentarians

“…Despite our focus on Germany, there are good reasons to believe that we would obtain similar results in other European hosting states (e.g., the Netherlands or Belgium) that are, like Germany, currently debating the wisdom of continued stationing of US nuclear weapons on their territory ( Fuhrhop, Kühn, and Meier 2020 ;Smetana, Onderco, and Etienne 2021 ; see also the discussion in Morgan and Péczeli 2021 ). While the overall views on nuclear weapons will be somewhat different in these countries than in other European states with dramatically different historical experiences (e.g., Poland or the Baltic states), the actual gaps in publicelite attitudes that are the core subject of this study--e.g., the different levels of context-specific knowledge and the amount of exposure to normative arguments--are arguably based on differences that should hold cross-nationally, perhaps even beyond the European context.…”

Hawks in the making? European public views on nuclear weapons post‐Ukraine

“…The publics were also rather open to the idea of a withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Europe, especially in the case of an arms control agreement with Russia. Furthermore, Europeans were rather strongly opposed to the use of nuclear weapons stationed on their territory in a conflict with Russia (see Onderco et al, 2021; Smetana et al, 2021; Smetana & Onderco, 2022a). Similar results were found by the anti‐nuclear weapon civil society, who used the public's opposition to nuclear weapons to bolster the case against NATO nuclear sharing (ICAN, 2021).…”

“…The ultimate result of such an absence of public debate is a widespread doubt about the usefulness of nuclear weapons reflected in the public opinion in a number of European countries, including Germany and the Netherlands. Both academic surveys and those conducted by anti‐nuclear weapon activists demonstrated public scepticism about nuclear deterrence, and a substantial portion of the European publics (often over 50%, depending on the survey and country) were in favour of withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Europe (for an activist survey, see ICAN, 2019; for academic surveys, see Onderco et al, 2021; Onderco & Smetana, 2021; Pelopidas, 2017; Pelopidas & Egeland, 2020; Pelopidas & Fialho, 2019b; Smetana et al, 2021).…”