Stationing of US intermediate-range missiles

A threat of nuclear war in Europe

by Dr. Erich Vad,* Germany

(27 September 2024) With hardly any critical media coverage and without any public discussion, the US and German governments agreed on the sidelines of the NATO summit on 10 July 2024 to deploy missiles, cruise missiles and supersonic weapons with ranges between 460 and 3000 kilometres in Germany from 2026.

The reasoning behind this is that a capability gap in NATO in terms of land-based weapons systems compared to comparable Russian systems, such as the Iskander missile systems in the Kaliningrad Oblast, must be closed. In the event of war, the main purpose of the implementation is to enable the US to launch weapons systems from Germany that can neutralise Russian bases in the depths of Russia with minimal missile flight times, without endangering the US itself.

Moscow will react – Germany will be targeted by Russian nuclear weapons

In the worst case, the security of Germany, and perhaps even Europe, will be separated from the security of North America, making a nuclear war limited to Europe a distinct possibility. From a German perspective, this is a no-go in terms of foreign and security policy!

Russia will respond by stationing more medium-range systems in the west of the country and in Belarus, which will put our country even more in the sights of Russian nuclear weapons. This will inevitably lead to an arms race with Germany at its centre.

* Dr. Erich Vad is a retired brigadier general who served as an adviser on security and defence policy from 2000 to 2006 in the German Bundestag in Berlin and from 2006 to 2013, he was a group leader in the Federal Chancellery, secretary of the Federal Security Council and military adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel. He is a proven expert and practitioner of international security policy. He is the author of specialist books and numerous specialist articles. Today, he works as a business consultant, an expert on international security issues and as a lecturer at universities in Germany and abroad.

Source: https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesellschaft/geopolitik/erich-vad-zur-stationierung-von-us-mittelstreckenraketen-nuklearkrieg-in-europa-li.2250586, 5 September 2024

(Reprinted with kind permission of the author.)
(Translation “Swiss Standpoint”)