Suspicious minds: Why Europeans are considering their post-America nuclear options

By Rafael Loss, European Council on Foreign Relations, 26 February 2026

With America’s credibility eroding, Europeans are looking for alternatives to US extended nuclear deterrence. Leaders should find confidence in electorate support for strengthening nuclear deterrence through European cooperation

America’s credibility is in tatters. According to ECFR’s latest public opinion poll, fewer Europeans than ever consider the United States under President Donald Trump “an ally that shares our interests and values”. This shift has been building since at least February 2024, shortly after Trump encouraged Russia to attack “delinquent” US allies on the campaign trail—an intervention that crystallised fears about Washington’s reliability and fuelled Europeans’ desire for alternative models of nuclear deterrence.

Britain and France, Europe’s two nuclear-armed NATO allies, are central in the resultant conversations. Britain’s nuclear weapons have long been committed to the defence of the alliance, whereas France’s deterrent sits outside of the NATO framework. As such, French president Emmanuel Macron’s address on nuclear deterrence, which is due to take place on March 2nd, is sure to draw particular scrutiny.

NATO 3-point-NO
American officials insist that the Trump administration’s push for a “NATO 3.0” merely represents the strategic rebalancing at the heart of the new US National Defense Strategy. This means Europeans assume responsibility for conventional deterrence and defence while the US remains committed to extended nuclear deterrence for its European allies. US under secretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby, argued at the Munich Security Conference that America had “over-assured” its European partners in the post-cold-war decades; he suggests that some “anxiety” on their part would motivate and accelerate European efforts to rearm.

But Europeans aren’t buying it. Maybe they deduce that a US with no conventional military skin in the game would hardly risk nuclear war on behalf of its European allies, which in turn could incentivise Russia to use nuclear weapons and force a halfway-disengaged US out of Europe entirely. Or perhaps they simply mistrust a US president who claims that he must “own” allies’ territory, imposes tariffs and other trade measures, and interferes in their domestic political processes to boost MAGA-aligned actors.

According to two surveys conducted by ECFR in May and November 2025, respondents across Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland now tend to support rather than oppose the idea of developing an alternative European nuclear deterrent that does not rely on the US. Only Hungarians and Italians, who (alongside Bulgarians) have by far the most positive view of Russia among all European societies polled by ECFR, consistently tend to reject such considerations.

These numbers should at least give European leaders—who have been consulting behind closed doors and are gradually making more public pronouncements—the confidence that they have electorate backing on the nuclear issue. But governments will approach these conversations from different perspectives.

For example, Germany and Italy have long been host countries for forward-deployed US nuclear weapons and providers of nuclear-capable fighter aircraft, with more experience of direct participation in US extended nuclear deterrence than other Europeans. As such, these countries might bring greater bureaucratic and habitual attachment to the US-centred system than other countries.

Nuclear postures of Britain and France

According to NATO, French and British nuclear forces already “contribute significantly to the overall security of the Alliance”. This is largely because London and Paris represent “separate centres of [nuclear] decision-making” that complicate potential adversaries’ risk calculations—meaning it is not just Washington’s resolve and capabilities they must consider when contemplating an attack on the alliance.

Yet there are reasons why NATO leaders frame these efforts to strengthen European deterrence as complementary to the US extended nuclear deterrent, and not in lieu of it. For one, neither France nor Britain have had the ambition to extend nuclear deterrence like the US. Their arsenals evolved in the shadow of America’s expansive cold-war nuclear posture, which consisted of tens of thousands of strategic nuclear warheads and several thousand tactical nuclear weapons forward-deployed on allied territory in Europe and Asia.

Historically, US extended nuclear deterrence intended to reassure allies that they remain secure without acquiring nuclear weapons of their own. The tactical (and non-strategic) weapons that underpinned extended deterrence also offered flexible employment options across the spectrum of conflict. France and Britain, in turn, have relied on minimum credible deterrence postures to deter threats to their vital national interests (though these have European dimensions, as the UK-France “Northwood Declaration” of July 2025 stipulated).

Now America’s eroding credibility means that it remains necessary for France and Britain to retain their nuclear forces, especially when considering future NATO security. However, to become instruments of non-proliferation or escalation management, they require development. To borrow from the latest US Strategic Posture Commission, French and British nuclear forces—as the core of a future European strategic deterrent—likely need to grow in size and change composition (or both) to account for structural changes in US defence strategy and Trump-specific hits to US credibility. But they would not have to replicate the US posture to achieve this.

Moreover, France, Britain and their European partners would also have to agree on joint rhetoric and actions to signal resolve and capability in European deterrence. This is not only to assure each other, but also to deter potential adversaries.

Securing support for wider deterrence

French survey respondents support an expansion of their country’s nuclear arsenal. However, their British counterparts are more sceptical, opposing additional weapons for the UK nuclear deterrent by slight margins.

In the language of ECFR’s Celia Belin and Pawel Zerka, who have applied an archipelago framework for coalition-building in a post-Western Europe, “bayonet coalitions” of centrist and right-wing voters in France and Britain are most likely to support adaptations to their countries’ nuclear forces—but presumably to advance national(ist) interests first.

National Rally (RN) party leader, Marine Le Pen, supports the French nuclear deterrent in principle as a source of sovereignty, but has stated that it “must not be shared”. Her party’s likely candidate for the French presidential elections in 2027, Jordan Bardella, concurs. He says it would be “national treason” for France to “share the button” as part of a Europeanisation of the French deterrent.

In Britain, leaders of the right-wing populist party Reform UK are less explicit on nuclear issues. This is possibly because the British submarine-launched nuclear capability is closely tied to the US nuclear enterprise and integrated with the NATO framework, and thus less salient as a symbol of national sovereignty than France’s force de dissuasion. Still, like the French nationalists’ position, Nigel Farage’s ambivalence on Russia and rejection of EU-European defence initiatives put an upper bound on centrist leaders’ ambitions for their cooperation with other Europeans on nuclear deterrence.

In all their conversations about evolving European nuclear deterrence, leaders should not forget that loose talk in Europe could loosen restraints on nuclear proliferation in other parts of the world. After all, Europeans should have an interest in reinforcing both deterrence toward Russia and the global non-proliferation regime.

Disclaimer

The European Council on Foreign Relations and CENAS Board do not take collective positions. ECFR and CEMS publications only represent the views of their individual authors.