U.S. Ambassador Suggests Poland Might Take U.S. Nuclear Bombs That Are Now In Germany

May 17, 2020 (EIRNS)—In the midst of the debate in Germany over the future of that country’s participation in NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangement, Georgette Mosbacher, the U.S. ambassador in Warsaw, thinks that if Germans don’t want U.S. nuclear weapons on their territory, perhaps Poland would take them. “If Germany wants to diminish nuclear capability and weaken NATO, perhaps Poland—which pays its fair share, understands the risks, and is on NATO’s eastern flank—could house the capabilities here,” she wrote on Twitter on May 15. She attached an article by Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany and acting Director of National Intelligence, in which he accused the German government of not doing its part for NATO’s policy of nuclear deterrence.

Grenell’s article, which appeared as an op-ed in Die Welt and was apparently in response to statements made by both German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and Rolf Mützenich, the leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in parliament, regarding the future of Germany’s participation in NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangement. Mützenich has called for the government to force the U.S. military to remove its nuclear weapons from German territory.

Grenell, in response to Mützenich, warned, using Cold War rhetoric, that just because the Cold War is over, it does not mean European security is not threatened by Russia, China or North Korea. He said that if Maas, a member of the SPD, wants Germany to be “a power for peace,” as he claims, “instead of undermining the solidarity that forms the basis of NATO’s nuclear deterrence, it is now time for Germany to meet its commitments to its allies and to continuously invest in NATO’s nuclear participation.”

Mosbacher’s tweet and Grenell’s article have generated some harsh responses. “You have no sense of history, do you,” tweeted back former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter. “Simply one of the dumbest ideas in the world. By the way, the Russian High Command thanks you for making it easier to overrun and seize this so-called nuclear deterrent. Google 1st Guards Tank Army.”

As for Russia’s response, Sputnik warns that if the decision were made, Moscow would see it the way Moscow saw the deployment of U.S. nuclear-tipped Jupiter missiles in Turkey in the early 1960s. The Soviet Union responded by placing nuclear missiles in Cuba, triggering the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. The mutual deployment of nuclear weapons in such close proximity to each other’s borders led to a major escalation in tensions that is believed to have been very close to turning into a full-scale nuclear conflict, reports Sputnik.

Sputnik points out that the proximity of disaster had the effect of clearing the heads of the leaders of the two countries who then embarked on a path to try to reduce the threat of nuclear war. However, the U.S. over the last three years appears to be heading in the opposite direction, with the withdrawal from the INF Treaty, with the deployment of a new low-yield warhead and with the future of New START very much up in the air.

It should be noted that in the early 1960s, Kennedy and Khrushchev were in almost constant dialogue, even during the missile crisis, but today the political environment in Washington is such that a similar dialogue between Trump and Putin intended to reduce strategic tensions between the two countries is nearly impossible.