Europe fears as Russia withdraws from nuclear treaty with US

Retired pharmacist Elke Koller has chosen a quiet place with vast green hills in the Eifel region of western Germany for her retirement. However, her house is so close to a nuclear weapons depot at a joint US-German base that if it exploded, she would be vaporized in an instant.

"This place was so beautiful, I didn't know about the bombs because they were a military secret. When I found out, I thought, 'The army won't need them and they'll be moved in a few years,'" Koller recalled. However, 25 years have passed, and the nuclear warheads have not disappeared, but have become more numerous.

The specter of a nuclear arms race has returned as both the US and Russia withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. With that comes the question of whether Europe should accept the US deploying more nuclear warheads right next door to Russia.

Most Europeans do not support escalating tensions with Russia. The proposal to allow the US to stockpile and deploy new bombs and missiles would surely provoke a backlash and expose a rift in an alliance already strained by suspicion between US President Donald Trump and his European counterparts. Russia could exploit these divisions.

"The situation is very clear. Apart from Poland and maybe a few others, no European country is willing to deploy additional intermediate-range nuclear weapons on its territory," said Otfried Nassauer, an expert at the Information Center for Transatlantic Security (ICTS) in Berlin.

Russia and the United States still have five months to salvage the INF, but neither country is optimistic about the prospect. A new arms race between the two nuclear superpowers would further darken the picture of global disarmament, with the Iran nuclear deal on the brink of collapse, US-North Korea talks showing little progress, and nuclear-armed India and Pakistan constantly threatening each other.

The withdrawal of Russia and the United States from the INF Treaty has also left Europeans once again living under the fear of nuclear war. In the 1980s, the United States steadily increased its nuclear arsenal, while European countries were ready to deploy them on their territory to counter the Soviet Union, making them the front line in the ever-present conflict between the two superpowers.

However, not everyone supported this. The presence of thousands of nuclear missiles across Europe sparked massive protests at the time. It was not until the US signed the INF Treaty with the Soviet Union in 1987 and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 that the nuclear threat in Europe was significantly reduced.

Today, although still nuclear powers, France and Britain have significantly reduced their arsenals. Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Türkiye allow the US to deploy nuclear weapons on their territory without violating the INF.

Twenty nuclear bombs are kept in secret at a joint US-German base in the western town of Buechel. "When I say I live near atomic bombs, people think I'm joking. They say, 'Germany doesn't have nuclear weapons,'" Koller said.

Washington and Berlin have never publicly acknowledged the existence of these weapons, but neither have they denied the rumors. German Tornado fighter jets, which would carry nuclear weapons in the event of war, fly over Koller every day for training and patrols.

Koller has been campaigning to remove nuclear weapons from the region since 1990, with hundreds of demonstrations outside the Buechel base. However, it has been a lonely struggle, with most of her neighbors only reluctantly supporting her, some even resentful, arguing that the military base is necessary to create jobs and boost the local economy.

"When I go to bars, people say my idea is crazy and that it's ruining their jobs. They don't want to admit that nuclear weapons are a threat to all of humanity," said Rüdiger Lancelle, a 79-year-old retired teacher and anti-nuclear weapons activist.

However, signs of concern are growing after the US and Russia both announced their withdrawal from the INF. Protests outside the base in Buechel have increasingly involved young people, who are seen as a new source of energy in a movement that is largely made up of older people.

“For our generation, nuclear war is something very far away, but it’s not really true,” said Clara Tempel, a 23-year-old citizen who spent a week in jail for breaking into the military base during a protest last year. The German military is building a taller, more secure fence around the Buechel base at a cost of about $12 million to prevent similar acts.

US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the INF treaty has fueled anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany, with only 10% of Germans believing the White House chief is doing the right thing for the world, according to a poll earlier this year.

"Nuclear rearmament has caused a very negative reaction in Germany, with Trump at the center of all criticism," said Christian Molling, a defense expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations.

In the 2017 German election, the center-left Social Democrats tried to capitalize on this sentiment by pledging to eliminate nuclear weapons in Buechel. Now, as a party in the government coalition, they say they will oppose any attempt to deploy nuclear missiles in Germany, while the ruling Christian Democrats insist all options remain open.

The status quo remains intact. That pleases Walter Schmitz, mayor of Cochem, the closest town to Buechel Air Base. The town has a population of 5,000 and is just a 20-minute drive from the base. Schmitz says the town has no contingency plan in case of a nuclear accident or war.

"Fundamentally, nuclear weapons are bad. They are destructive and we should eliminate them. But the fact that our adversaries have them means that our Western allies need to maintain equivalent arsenals. That is the price of peace," Schimitz said.