Enhancing U.S. Extended Nuclear Deterrence in Europe

Since the end of the Second World War, the United States established a strategy of extended nuclear deterrence to protect its allies in Western Europe, allowing them to enjoy peace and security for over 80 years. A resurgent Russia is expanding its nuclear forces, has put nuclear weapons at the center of its military and political strategy, and envisions their limited use as a means of political coercion in war.[1]  According to a recent Hudson Institute report, U.S. theater nuclear weapons would play a unique role in combating that nuclear coercion.[2]  Based on historical experiences from the Cold War, this role should be played by land-based nuclear armed missiles forward deployed in Europe, as exemplified by the 1980’s deployment of Pershing II and Ground Launched Cruise Missiles (GLCM) to enhance U.S. extended deterrence.  Ultimately, these deployments were curtailed by the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which contributed to the successful end of the Cold War on terms favorable to the West.[3]

In 1962, the Soviets placed MRBM systems in Cuba to be able to target the continental U.S. in order to compensate for their lessor number of ICBMs in relation to the United States. The Soviets were forced to withdraw those missiles in no small part to the United States having overwhelming nuclear superiority and escalation dominance.[5]

As part of the Cuban Missile Crisis settlement, the United States removed the Jupiter missiles from Turkey, and later the Jupiters from Italy and Thors from Britain. West German Chancelor Helmut Schmidt later criticized that withdrawal and countered that these missiles should have remained until replaced by more modern missiles. [6]

To compensate for the withdrawal of these land-based missiles, the United Staes assigned some of its strategic, sea-based Polaris submarines with SLBMs to NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) for targeting Soviet forces. However, many NATO allies believed that it would be more credible for the United States threaten to employ intermediate missiles based in the European theater, and doubted that the United States would be willing to launch its central strategic Submarine-launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs) with a greater risk if risking the U.S., homeland in retaliation. [7]

The next time IRBMs became a serious political and military issue was with the Soviet achievement of strategic intercontinental parity, as codified by the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) Agreement, followed by the deployment of mobile, more accurate Soviet SS-20 IRBMs with multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIRV) as replacement for the older SS-4 and SS-5 missiles, beginning in 1976.

It was the Soviet achievement of strategic nuclear parity, conferred by the SALT agreement that worried Chancellor Schmidt and NATO strategists that the U.S. extended deterrence nuclear umbrella over Europe was weakened and there would be a gap in the chain of deterrence between short-range battlefield nuclear weapons and U.S. strategic nuclear forces.[8]

To address this theater nuclear unbalance and the perceived worsening credibility of extended deterrence, NATO considered deploying new nuclear theater forces in Europe, specifically:

The idea of deploying sea launched missiles was rejected because they were not seen as having as much political visibility as would land based missiles, and the concept of more air delivered weapons were rebuffed because it was feared that aircraft platforms were considered too vulnerable to the Soviets’ well developed air defense network.

In December 1979, NATO agreed to deploy 108 land-based Pershing II ballistic missiles and 464 GLCMs.

By 1987, the United States had deployed one-third of its eventual 108-launcher Pershing II missile force in West Germany. Soviet officials specifically feared that the Pershing II had a mission to conduct a decapitating strike on Soviet command and control elements in Moscow, and in December of that year, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the INF Treaty. That treaty eliminated 1,846 Soviet and 846 U.S. missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km.[9]^,[10]

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, leading to the freedom for the Soviet’s Eastern European allies in 1989, and with the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Cold War was over.

Since the end of the Cold War, Russia’s conventional forces are a shadow of its former Soviet self. Because of this, Russia felt its only affordable means to offset its conventional inferiority in relation to NATO was to increasingly rely on nuclear weapons.

Russia has around 2,000 nonstrategic nuclear weapons threatening Europe[11] which could be delivered by a diversified force of air delivered weapons and land and sea based ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles, compared with 200 B-61 gravity bombs for the United States has stored in Europe. [12]   Russia has also recently developed and deployed novel nuclear weapons, including the Tsirkon sea-launched hypersonic missile, the Kinzhal Air Launched Ballistic Missile, and the Orezhnik IRBM, all of which have been employed against Ukraine in their conventional versions. Russia has recreated its overwhelming theater nuclear superiority that it enjoyed in the late 70’s and early 80’s with its SS-20 deployments. Then, as now, this Soviet/Russian theater nuclear superiority creates a gap in the escalation ladder and threatens the credibility of the American nuclear guarantee. In 1979, NATO proposed the deployment of Pershing II and GLCMs to address this gap. In 2023, the Congressional sponsored Strategic Posture Commission warned that the U.S. extended nuclear deterrent “is not fit for purpose in the changed security environment and will become even less fit over the coming decade without remedial action”.[13]^,[14]

The United States currently has deployed 200 B-61 nuclear gravity bombs, in Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Turkey to be carried by NATO dual-capable fighter aircraft. To augment these theater nuclear weapons, the United States has developed the low yield W76-2 Trident Warhead,[15] and plans to reintroduce the nuclear Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM). [16]

However, just as in the 1960’s when Polaris SLBMs were viewed as poor substitutes for the removed Jupiter and Thor IRBMs, and the NATO 1979 decision to deploy land-based Pershing II and GLCMs, and not sea-launched or additional air-delivered nuclear munitions, the current remedy to enhanced nuclear extended deterrence would be tore-introduce nuclear land-based missiles in Europe.

Thus, United States should add a nuclear capability to the conventional missile forces it is currently developing and deploying, which are as follows:

Table 1: New U.S. Theater Missile Systems

While nuclear warheads are not planned for these land-based missile systems, the U.S. Congress has directed the Department of Defense to produce the W80-4 nuclear warhead for the Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missile.[17]  As they are identical missiles, this would mean that the Tomahawk ground-launched cruise missile could have a nuclear version.

Even if the United States does not overtly deploy a nuclear warhead on the GLCM Tomahawk, the presence of a stockpile of nuclear Tomahawk SLCM warheads potentially at the ready for deployment with Tomahawk GLCMs could force the Russians to take this possibility into consideration. The Soviets/Russians have a habit of over-estimating U.S. missile capabilities, wrongly believing that the 1800 km range Pershing II could reach Moscow, and fearing that the Aegis Ashore missile defense system deployed on Poland and Romania was capable of firing offensive missiles in a surface-to-surface mode.  Thus, the mere possibility of nuclear Tomahawk missiles would complicate Russia war plans, which enhances deterrence.

To strengthen extended nuclear deterrence, the United States should openly field nuclear capable versions of these conventional missile systems, along with their nuclear warheads, in nuclear storage sites in selected European nations. While some NATO nations may be reluctant to host new nuclear weapons on their soil, Poland,[18] Finland,[19] and the Baltic nations[20] have expressed a readiness for NATO to bring nuclear weapons into their countries.

During the Cold War, the United States deployed nuclear long-range land-based missiles to target the Soviet Union to bolster extended deterrence for its NATO allies. This was especially successful with NATO’s INF deployments to counter Soviet SS-20’s in the 1980’s. This success can be replicated today if NATO were to deploy nuclear versions of the Standard Missile-6 SSM, Precision Strike Missile, Tomahawk GLCM, or the Dark Eagle Hypersonic Glide Vehicle, either individually or in combination. The successful deployment of these missile systems would change the Euro-strategic nuclear balance from one of Russian superiority to one closer to parity. Or, as occurred with the previous NATO INF deployments, the threat to field these new nuclear missiles could prompt Russia to agree to a nuclear arms treaty to eliminate or reduce nuclear long-range missiles on both sides, similar to the zero option of the INF Treaty. Either way would lead to enhanced nuclear deterrence.

MAJ Dennis S. Nelson (U.S. Army, ret.)

[1] Paige Gaiser, Toward A New Strategic Approach To U.S. Extended Nuclear Deterrence, Livermore Papers on Global Security, Aug 2025, https://cgsr.llnl.gov/sites/cgsr/files/2025-09/Toward%20a%20New%20Strategic%20Approach%20to%20U.S.%20Extended%20Nuclear%20Deterrence-WEB.pdf 

[2] Rebeccah L. Heinrichs, Matthew Costlow, Kyle Balzer, Ryan Tully, Relearning Escalation Dynamics 

to Win the New Cold War, Hudson Institute, 2024, https://s3.amazonaws.com/media.hudson.org/Relearning+Escalation+Dynamics+to+Win+the+New+Cold+War.pdf

[3] Burns, Steven, History of the Pershing Missile System, 2014.

[4] Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs William R. Tyler to Secretary Rusk, “Turkish and Italian IRBMs,” 9 November 1962, with Rusk Memorandum to the President attached, “Political and Military Considerations Bearing on Turkish and Italian IRBM’s,” November 9, 1962, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/jupiter-missiles-and-endgame-cuban-missile-crisis-matter-great-secrecy 

[5] Suzanne Peters, West German Doctrines and Their Predominance in the Evolution of the NATO Dual-Track Decision of 1979, December 1989

[6] Suzanne Peters, West German Doctrines and Their Predominance in the Evolution of the NATO Dual-Track Decision of 1979, December 1989

[7] Suzanne Peters, West German Doctrines and Their Predominance in the Evolution of the NATO Dual-Track Decision of 1979, December 1989

[8] Garthoff, Raymond, The NATO Decision on Theater Nuclear Forces, Political Science Quarterly Vol. 98, No. 2 (Summer, 1983).

[9] Hines, John, Mishulovich, Ellis, and Shull, John, Soviet Intensions 1965-1985, Volume I: An Analytical Comparison of U.S.-Soviet Assessments During the Cold War, BDM Federal, 22 Sept 1995.

[10] Hines, John, Mishulovich, Ellis, and Shull, John, Soviet Intensions 1965-1985, Volume II: Soviet Post-Cold War Testimonial Evidence, BDM Federal, 22 Sept 1995.

[11] Lt. Gen. Robert P. Ashley, Jr., Director DIA, Russian and Chinese Nuclear Modernization Trends, 29 May 2019.

[12] Fact Sheet: United States Nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons, Center for Arms Control and Proliferation, 25 May 2016.

[13] Toward A New Strategic Approach To U.S. Extended Nuclear Deterrence, Paige Gasser, Livermore Papers On Global Security No. 15 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Center for Global Security Research, August 2025, Toward a New Strategic Approach to U.S. Extended Nuclear Deterrence-WEB.pdf

[14] America’s Strategic Posture, The Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, Oct 2023, ida.org/research-and-publications/publications/all/a/am/americas-strategic-posture

[15] Statement on the Fielding of the W76-2 Low-Yield Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile Warhead, Department of Defense, 4 Feb 2020, https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/2073532/statement-on-the-fielding-of-the-w76-2-low-yield-submarine-launched-ballistic-m/

[16] Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N) Congressional Research Service, Updated February 12, 2025, https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/PDF/IF12084/IF12084.12.pdf

[17] Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N) Congressional Research Service, Updated February 12, 2025, https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/PDF/IF12084/IF12084.12.pdf

[18] Poland: We’re ready to host nuclear weapons, Politico, 22 April 2024, https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-ready-host-nuclear-weapons-andrzej-duda-nato/

[19] Jessica Rawnsley, Finland plans to lift decades-old ban on hosting nuclear weapons, BBC, 5 March 2026, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c14m5llnrlpo

[20] Todd Meltzer, Nuclear Proliferation in Poland and the Baltics: An American IR Student Perspective, Baltic Security Foundation, 28 Aug 2025, https://balticsecurity.eu/nuclear/