Trump Prompts Rethink of Nuclear-Weapons Deals

Summary

WSJ What’s News: Trump Prompts Rethink of Nuclear-Weapons Deals
Release Date: April 13, 2025

In the April 13, 2025 episode of WSJ What’s News, host Luke Vargas delves into the complex landscape of nuclear weapons policy reshaped by recent geopolitical shifts, particularly influenced by the Trump administration's stance on NATO and nuclear deterrence. This episode explores the potential dawn of a new nuclear arms race, examining the motivations of various countries in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East as they reassess their reliance on the United States' nuclear umbrella.

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Introduction: Renewed Nuclear Dialogues

Luke Vargas opens the discussion by highlighting the renewed talks between the US and Iran over Tehran's nuclear program. He sets the stage for a critical exploration of whether these negotiations could ignite a fresh nuclear arms race globally. The episode emphasizes concerns from diverse regions questioning the sufficiency of America's nuclear protection and considering alternative measures, including seeking new alliances or developing their own nuclear capabilities.

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European Allies Reconsider Nuclear Deterrence

Lawrence Norman, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, provides an overview of Europe's current stance on nuclear deterrence:

“So I think the first thing to say is that this change so far is incremental. There is not a sudden race to nuclear arms taking place across the world.”
[01:36]

Norman explains that while countries like Germany, traditionally non-nuclear, are marginally discussing the necessity of nuclear weapons, established nuclear powers like France are contemplating extending their nuclear umbrella to defend European allies. This rethinking comes amidst growing skepticism about the Trump administration's commitment to NATO:

“This obviously comes at a time when there is a great deal of concern that the Trump administration is less interested in NATO and less interested in defending.”
[02:26]

Marion Mesmer, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, underscores the challenges faced by European nations considering new nuclear deterrence options:

“The big constraint that all of these states have is the Non Proliferation Treaty... developing a nuclear program is something that would take a lot of time and would take a lot of investment.”
[02:41]

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Extending the Nuclear Umbrella: UK’s Role

Mesmer elaborates on the United Kingdom's existing nuclear arsenal and its role in NATO's defense strategy:

“The UK Nuclear arsenal already protects NATO as such. So that means, you know, every day that the nuclear submarine is at sea, it's just down to the UK prime minister to decide whether nuclear weapons are launched or not.”
[03:48]

She points out that while France and the US are key players in nuclear deterrence, the UK's maintenance of its own nuclear forces provides a layer of protection, albeit with limitations if US collaboration wanes.

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Asia’s Nuclear Dilemma: South Korea and Japan

Shifting focus to Asia, Lawrence Norman discusses the burgeoning nuclear aspirations of South Korea:

“If there is a single country that is at this stage most likely to go for a nuclear weapon because of its concerns about US Support, it is probably South Korea.”
[04:45]

Norman highlights that South Korea's consideration of a nuclear program is partly driven by fears of reduced US military presence and the potential threat from China. This pivot is seen as a strategic move to bolster national security in an increasingly uncertain regional landscape.

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Risks of a Global Nuclear Arms Race

Marion Mesmer voices deep concerns about the implications of multiple countries acquiring nuclear weapons:

“If they were to develop nuclear weapons, it would also have a knock-on effect on the security concerns of their neighbors... the more nuclear armed states you have, the greater your chance that a war between any one of them is going to go nuclear at some point.”
[05:37]

She warns that countries like Turkey acquiring nuclear weapons could trigger a domino effect, prompting Iran and Saudi Arabia to follow suit, thereby destabilizing global security and escalating the risks of nuclear conflict.

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Expert Insights: Building a Nuclear Program

Post-intermission, De Bak Das, an assistant professor at the Joseph Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, offers a detailed analysis of the practicalities involved in extending a nuclear umbrella or developing an indigenous nuclear weapons program.

Extending France’s Nuclear Umbrella:

“If the goal is to prevent a strategic nuclear strike by Russia on Germany or Poland, that's possible. But then the question is, would that be a credible nuclear umbrella?”
[08:41]

Das explains that for France to credibly extend its nuclear protection to other European countries, substantial military deployments would be necessary, which could, in turn, escalate tensions with adversaries.

Developing Indigenous Nuclear Programs:

Das outlines the intricate process of building a nuclear weapons capability:

“There are three technical requisites to have a nuclear weapons program... You need the bomb itself, weaponization, and a means of delivery.”
[10:22]

He emphasizes that no country has successfully developed nuclear weapons entirely independently, as external assistance or illicit technology transfers are typically involved. This dependency complicates efforts by nations like South Korea or Saudi Arabia to achieve nuclear sovereignty without foreign support.

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The Precipice of a New Proliferation Era

Concluding the episode, Das reflects on the precariousness of the current global security environment:

“We've truly arrived at the precipice because you've got so many different countries who are talking about potentially getting different parts of the trifecta I was talking about.”
[12:06]

He cautions that the proliferation of nuclear weapons heightens existing security risks, including the potential for accidental nuclear war, increased likelihood of nuclear terrorism, and destabilized international relations.

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Conclusion: Navigating a Nuclear Future

Luke Vargas wraps up the episode by reiterating the urgent need for robust arms control measures and international cooperation to prevent a resurgence of nuclear proliferation. The discussions underscore the delicate balance nations must maintain between ensuring security and avoiding an escalated arms race that could threaten global stability.

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Notable Quotes:

• Lawrence Norman: “This change so far is incremental. There is not a sudden race to nuclear arms taking place across the world.” [01:36]
• Marion Mesmer: “The big constraint that all of these states have is the Non Proliferation Treaty...” [02:41]
• De Bak Das: “No country has ever built a nuclear weapons program without external help.” [11:30]

This episode of WSJ What’s News provides a comprehensive examination of the shifting dynamics in global nuclear policy, highlighting the intricate interplay between national security, international treaties, and the ever-present threat of nuclear proliferation.

Transcript

[Luke Vargas]

Viking committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe on an elegant Viking longship with thoughtful service, cultural enrichment and all inclusive fares. Discover [e-mail] hey, what's news, listeners? It's Sunday, April 13th. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal and this is what's News Sunday, the show where we tackle the big questions about the biggest stories in the news by reaching out to our colleagues across the newsroom to help explain what's happening in our world. And this week, as the as the US And Iran renew talks over Tehran's nuclear program, could we be at the dawn of a new nuclear arms race? It's a question surfacing the world over as countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle east question whether America's nuclear umbrella offers enough protection and which is driving some to seek out the protection of others or consider building their own nukes. We'll look at who's scoping out new nuclear deterrence, the proliferation risks of a renewed arms race, and what the process of actually building a nucle program would look like in 2025. A little later on, we will be joined by nuclear weapons expert De Bak Das to discuss the practical details of going nuclear. But first, let me introduce Journal reporter Lawrence Norman and from the London think tank Chatham House senior research fellow Marion Mesmer, an expert in arms control and nuclear weapons policy. Lawrence, let me start with you just to set the stage here. Walk us through what we have been hearing specifically from US Allies in Europe about their interest in nuclear new deterrence options on the nuclear front.

[Lawrence Norman]

So I think the first thing to say is that this change so far is incremental. There is not a sudden race to nuclear arms taking place across the world. What we've heard in Europe is in Germany, a country that has never really considered nuclear weapons, there is some talk on the margins of do we need to do this significantly? We've heard France talk about extending its nuclear umbrell the nuclear weapons that it has to defend its European allies. And there is some interest and there are some conversations around how that would work. This obviously comes at a time when there is a great deal of concern that the Trump administration is less interested in NATO and less interested in defending.

[Luke Vargas]

Europe's security in terms of actual new nuclear programs. Is there anything more than just talk here? We've heard some rumblings from Poland, Turkey as well, countries thinking about maybe creating their own programs. Could that happen?

[Marion Mesmer]

I guess it could happen in theory. But one of the things that's really important to keep in Mind is that the big constraint that all of these states have is the Non Proliferation Treaty, right? So in that agreement, they all essentially agreed not to develop their own nuclear weapons. And the big risk that we're seeing here is that all of those discussions around the potential for nuclear weapons could also actually end up destabilizing the Non Proliferation Treaty, which wouldn't be a good thing for global security. And then of course, there's also the technical constraint, which is that developing a nuclear program is something that would take a lot of time and would take a lot of investment. And so because all of these states are essentially needing to scale up their armies and so on, there's also a big trade off between investing in a new nuclear program, which would be a huge cost sink at first, and balancing that with buying perhaps more off the shelf conventional capabilities.

[Luke Vargas]

Marin, you'd already alluded there to some of the alternative options to creating a new nuclear program, namely countries seeking out France to be protected by its nuclear umbrella. What about the UK Another European power that has nukes?

[Marion Mesmer]

Well, interestingly, UK Nuclear weapons already protect NATO member states as well. People usually focus on, when they think about extended deterrence in Europe, they usually focus on the forward deployed nuclear weapons that the US has stationed in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Turkey and Italy. But the UK Nuclear arsenal already protects NATO as such. So that means, you know, every day that the nuclear submarine is at sea, it's just down to the UK prime minister to decide whether nuclear weapons are launched or not. So if the US Was to decide that it no longer wants to maintain that cooperation with the UK the UK wouldn't immediately fall off a cliff edge. It would still have some time to figure out what it needs to do, but would essentially, in the longer term, needs to figure out how to service those missiles.

[Luke Vargas]

Lawrence, shift us over to South Korea and Japan if you could. I know talk, especially in Seoul, is growing louder about potentially pursuing a nuclear arms program there.

[Lawrence Norman]

If there is a single country that is at this stage most likely to go for a nuclear weapon because of its concerns about US Support, it is probably South Korea. They've talked about it over the last couple of years. They also had a program in the past that was dabbling in nuclear weapons. There are US officials who are expected to be quite high up in the Trump administration who have encouraged South Korea to think about the nuclear option because the US doesn't want to have a large defense commitment and tens of thousands of troops bogged down in South Korea in the future if it's going to face off with China.

[Luke Vargas]

Marion, that South Korean pivot seems like a consequential one. Add that to some of the other countries we've already mentioned. And I'm curious, what is the feeling in the arms control community as it watches these trends we've been discussing?

[Marion Mesmer]

It's hugely concerning, of course. Those countries might all have real security concerns, but the challenge is that if they were to develop nuclear weapons, it would also have a knock on effect on the security concerns of their neighbors. So my worry would essentially be that if we have additional countries developing nuclear weapons for their own security concerns, which might be perfectly legitimate, we end up in a global environment that is essentially much more insecure because we have more nuclear weapons to go around. We have more nuclear armed states that would essentially need to take each other into account when they make various strategic calculations. And we also can absolutely foresee that if, for example, Turkey was to acquire nuclear weapons, then Iran would probably also want to finish its nuclear acquisition. And then Saudi Arabia might also actually want to acquire nuclear weapons. And we also need to keep in mind that we've been really lucky not to have ended up in a nuclear war so far. But the more nuclear armed states you have, the greater your chance that a war between any one of them is going to go nuclear at some point.

[Luke Vargas]

What should we be watching for next?

[Lawrence Norman]

Iran. They are very, very close. Some people think that they could put together some kind of crude missile in a matter of two, three months. They could easily choose to develop a nuclear weapon. And as Marian said, if the Iranians do, the Saudis have said they will. The one that we should really worry about is the one we've been worrying about for 20 years, which is Iran.

[Luke Vargas]

Marion Messmer is a Senior Research Fellow in the International Security Program at Chatham House and Lawrence Norman is a Wall Street Journal reporter. Marion Lawrence, thank you both so much.

[Marion Mesmer]

Thank you.

[Lawrence Norman]

Thank you.

[Luke Vargas]

All right, we've got to take a very short break, but when we come back, how would a country go about building a nuclear weapons program? And if the goal is to reduce reliance on the U.S. is it possible without American technology and equipment? We'll get into that nuclear nitty gritty after the break.

[De Bak Das]

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[Luke Vargas]

Well, let's take the two scenarios that we've discussed so far, countries seeking shelter under another's nuclear umbrella or creating their own nuclear weapons programs, and learn what that would actually look like in practice. De Bak Das is an assistant professor at the Joseph Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver where he researches non proliferation. Debak how difficult would it be for France to extend its nuclear umbrella to cover other countries? We heard earlier about Germany and Poland maybe looking into this.

[De Bak Das]

So in terms of difficulty, the question is what exactly is it that France is trying to do with a nuclear cover? So if the question is is it to prevent conventional military attacks by Russia, then the answer is no. This would be very difficult to prevent. Both India and Pakistan possess nuclear weapons. They still fight conventional wars against each other. Then there's a question of is it to prevent subconventional attacks or land grabs by Russia in Poland or Eastern Europe? And the answer there again is with strategic weapons you cannot prevent that. If the goal is to prevent a strategic nuclear strike by Russia on Germany or Poland, that's possible. But then the question is, would that be a credible nuclear umbrella? In theory there could be a commitment made which would be an agreement that you could sign with another country. Now, that would not be credible till you have actual forces on the ground or deployments that threaten the adversary. Now what would those deployments be? France right now has 290 nuclear weapons. It has submarine launched ballistic missiles and it has an air launched cruise missile capability. That is not going to be enough. France will then have to take those aircraft with air launched cruise missiles, put them in Germany or put them in Poland. And those are going to come with their own threats because increasing your credibility also increases the threat of escalation.

[Luke Vargas]

Let's switch then to another option. Perhaps what is being considered, as we heard earlier in South Korea, maybe Saudi Arabia, which is countries thinking about creating their own nuclear weapons program. What would that process look like in 2025?

[De Bak Das]

The thing to remember with these programs is that there are three technical requisites to have a nuclear weapons program, right? One, you need the bomb, full right? So your uranium, your plutonium, hydrogen bombs need heavy isotopes of hydrogen, tritium. The second is you need weaponization. You need to take that bomb flow and you need to make a warhead, right? That warhead has to then be small enough, carryable enough so that you can put it on a means of delivery. This is the third part, which is putting it on a missile or making sure it's small enough that an aircraft can carry it. These three parts are what create a nuclear weapons program. That's an extremely time consuming process that could take 15 years, 20 years. Past examples of India, of Pakistan, even France's nuclear weapons program for the first 20 years was not a terribly credible one because they couldn't deliver the weapon directly to Moscow.

[Luke Vargas]

And for countries that are looking to create their own weapons program, can they do that in house, in a truly homegrown capacity without being reliant, let's say, on the US or China or Russia even?

[De Bak Das]

The short answer is no. No country has ever built a nuclear weapons program without external help. Even the US needed help from Germany, Germans, the Soviets needed help from the Germans and stolen things from the American programs. So is it possible that other countries might sell certain forms of technology for money? Yes, that could happen amongst second tier nuclear states potentially.

[Luke Vargas]

As we wrap up this discussion, are we standing at the precipice of a potentially dangerous proliferation moment?

[De Bak Das]

I think the security concerns remain. Our concerns have been with security of the nuclear material itself, nuclear accidents, command and control issues where, you know, you might have a battlefield commander with a tactical nuclear weapon going rogue, terrorist sabotage, accidental escalation. None of these major issues which we've been talking about for the past 50 years have disappeared. And with new nuclear programs, especially some of the safety and security concerns are higher than countries that have had some sort of standard operating protocol. They've been dealing with this for a long time. In terms of being on the precipice of a new age of proliferation. We truly are there because you've got so many different countries who are talking about potentially getting different parts of the trifecta I was talking about.

[Luke Vargas]

I have been speaking to De Bak Das, an assistant professor at the Joseph Corbell School of International Studies at the University of Denver. De Bak, thank you so much for being with us on what's news.

[De Bak Das]

Thank you for having me.

[Luke Vargas]

And that's it for what's new Sunday for April 13th. Today's show was produced by Charlotte Gardenberg with supervising producer Sandra Kilhoff. And we got help from deputy editor Chris Sinsley. I'm Luke Vargas and we'll be back Monday morning with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.