“Putin’s accomplices threaten a nuclear strike every day (…) In our own interest, we Germans must contribute financially to French nuclear power”
The “shielding” of Germany from a Russian nuclear strike, with the financing of the French nuclear arsenal so that Germany acquires deterrent nuclear power, is proposed by Wolfgang Schäuble.
Germany should contribute to the cost of France’s nuclear arsenal as the threat of a nuclear war with Russia looms over Europe, a veteran German politician said in an interview published on Saturday.
“Now that Putin’s accomplices are threatening a nuclear strike every day, one thing is clear to me: we also need nuclear deterrence at the European level,” Schäuble, a former finance minister and member of the German parliament for five decades, told the Welt newspaper. am Sonntag.
France has such weapons, he said, adding: “In our own interest, we Germans must contribute financially to French nuclear power in return a joint nuclear deterrent”.
Asked whether his proposal would give Berlin a reason to use nuclear weapons, the conservative former minister said France and Germany would have to reach an agreement as neighbors and NATO partners.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused the most serious crisis in Moscow’s relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when many feared the world was on the brink of nuclear war.
France – one of three NATO members with nuclear weapons, along with the United States and Britain – has about 300 nuclear warheads in its arsenal, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIRPI).
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