I don't think there's any question at this point that it's in Nordic self interest to develop a nuclear deterrent. This has also become true for other regions in the world.
This is all a horrible development for the overall future of humanity, but it's the world we live in now. At a minimum hundreds of billions of dollars will be siphoned off from more beneficial uses over the coming decades, and the risk of major accidents will increase. The worst change is of course the fact that the odds of a complete societal collapse have increased dramatically.
Almost all of the world's nukes are controlled by aging old dictators or aspiring dictators who are surrounded by sycophants and treat competence as much less important than personal loyalty. Geopolitical risks are only going to increase as these rulers become more erratic and demented.
> I don't think there's any question at this point that it's in Nordic self interest to develop a nuclear deterrent.
Yes, it definitely is.
> The worst change is of course the fact that the odds of a complete societal collapse have increased dramatically.
A nuke means that anyone who wants to invade you needs to price in a total loss of their largest city as a possible outcome. That is a great disincentive, one that Ukraine probably wishes it had against Russia.
> and the risk of major accidents will increase.
I don't think that's reasonable to say about a bunch of countries getting their first nuke. The concern should be more with countries like the US and Russia that have so many nukes, which they can't possibly use effectively, and don't have the ability to properly maintain.
If every western country had exactly one nuke, the world would probably be much safer than if the US has all of them.
> A nuke means that anyone who wants to invade you needs to price in a total loss of their largest city as a possible outcome. That is a great disincentive, one that Ukraine probably wishes it had against Russia.
It's even more complex than that. If Ukraine responded conventional war with nukes, it can be sure Russia would retaliate with even more nukes, practically extinguishing their statehood.
The equilibrium is reached when the exchange is equally devastating, so the only winning move is attacking first, and only if the attacked won't be able to retaliate. The Cold War never ended, just warmed a little, because it doesn't exist (yet) a guaranteed way to avoid an all-out nuclear retaliation.
That the Cold war was cold is also a joke. It was full, full, full of hot conflicts with client states.
What it seems to have deterred is two major states warring directly.
Conventional proxy wars are significantly cooler than all-out thermonuclear war.
that was the etymology, given the world we were emerging was one where major world powers came directly to blows amongst themselves rather than through the countless small-scale, regional proxy wars we saw over the 2nd half of the 20th century.
Even as the aggressor, you don't want to be nuked even if it might warrant a response.
Why just western countries? Let the entire world function under this same system of threat/protection. Why should it only be limited to your side?
Longterm klingons dont go to space, they goto heaven. Tribalist warrior cultures do not survive the nuclear age .
In light of renewed aggressions from powerful states, the only recourse smaller states have to defend themselves is to turn themselves into a fortress like Taiwan (which is prohibitively expensive for most larger states) or nuclear deterrence (which Ukraine gave up for false guarantees of protection from invasion). Guarantees aren't what they used to be, and I wouldn't be surprised if many waning US allies are covertly developing nuclear capabilities.
I hope my state is because the alternative is being at the whim of the powerful nuclear states around us in a political climate of rising authoritarianism.
> Guarantees aren't what they used to be
Anyone that has read history knows that state leaders' promises are written in the wind. Throughout history, states have traditionally behaved like dishonorable people, because their leaders have been traditionally dishonorable. It's as if it was almost a requirement, no matter the form of government.
> their leaders have been traditionally dishonorable.
I suspect that is because the majority of people who would make good, honorable leaders of nations do not want the job.
Ukraine was never a nuclear power any real sense. The USSR's bombs were parked there, and Ukraine merely had physical (but not operational) custody over them after the USSR fell. Ukraine could have kept them to bootstrap a nuclear arms program, but they didn't, so they were never had a nuclear deterrent to give up in the first place.
Nice russian talking point. UA designed developed and maintained most top tier soviet nuclear weapons. The largest nuke plant in USSR was Yuzhmash in Dnepr and largest design bureau again in UA Dnepr KB Yuzhnoe. UA had to help maintain russian nukes after the collapse of USSR cause russia lacked tech. capability.
To understand scale the Yuzhmash campus is 1800+ acres Boeing Everett is about 1000 acres
Credible Source?
Are you banned by google ? I literally provided you the names of the entities. They btw. designed and built the infamous SS-18 Satan
Since you're the one making the claim, it's fair for you to be the one to source it, even if it's just a Wikipedia link.
It's rethorically dishonest to make bold claims and ask others to "google them sources".
How is it a bold claim ?
Google it to find out
But the claim is literally true?
Yuzhnoye Design Office designed the R-36 (SS-18) and it was built by Yuzhny Machine-Building Plant, both in Dnipro.
Taiwan isn't much of a fortress. The Nordic states are probably better defended than Taiwan.
Ukraine never had the possibility to keep its nuclear arsenal, they simply didn't have the infrastructure for it, let's not pretend they had any real choice.
The US built nukes in the 1940s. Ukraine has at least as much technical know-how and engineering infrastructure as, say, Pakistan or North Korea.
They couldn't have launched the Russian warheads as-is, but disassembly and reuse of the warhead material is another thing entirely.
From what I have understood, a significant part of the reason why Sweden scrapped its nuke program last time around, was that we found out that nukes pose more questions than they answer. Obviously, you need the nukes themselves, and a reliable delivery mechanism. Neither are cheap. Preferably, you want second-strike capability, which is kind of tricky. And you want some way of balancing things so that the enemy does not take a chance on that second-strike capability and nuke you first anyway. Then you need something to use them for. At the time, the targets would probably have been ports in the Baltic states, then (involuntary) parts of the Soviet union and likely starting points for the hypothetical Soviet invasion fleet. Could we really stomach the idea of killing a few thousand Estonian civilians, probably not too happy about being used as stepping stones by the Soviets? For most military targets, there are better weapons.
Of course, it has later been argued that by entering into various more or less hidden agreements with the US, we made ourselves nuclear targets anyway, with no formal guarantees whatsoever to show for it...
Given that Sweden manufactures submarines since long ago, I'm surprised second-strike capability was even a question.
Agreed that finding a target that doesn't blow back in our own face would be an issue. Though you don't really have to answer that question to have a deterrent, almost by definition.
I read the title and i thought we are considering if nuking Northern Europe is a good idea.
you can have a tiny nuclear war, as a treat.
insane we're back here.
We kinda never really left.
if anything, we had fantastic stability because of it, and because there were rational-ish actors holding the bombs
It was a fantastic bluff from the USA to make the USSR believe that Bufford "Mad Dog" Tannen was in charge of the nukes, when in reality it was Doc. Brown.
The OG grift, FUD and extortion money. But call it a military industrial complex.. The Devil's Playground was an eye+opener
North Korea has nukes but those in the Nordics are bragging about defeating Russia by buying heat pumps. Much of Europe has been living in a time of what amounts to ignorant bliss which Putin is slowly shaking them out of.
It would have been stupid not to try peace.
Germany hasn't invaded France (or vice versa) for two generations now. The Soviet Union dissolved itself peacefully by act of parliament. (Compare to Germany/Japan/Napoleon)
"Peacefully" is a strong word, that same parliament would later be "peacefully" removed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_cr...
If you want peace, prepare for war
And if you aren't prepared, but you have peace anyway, you never really made the choice. You just had a bout of luck.
>Nordics are bragging about defeating Russia by buying heat pumps...ignorant bliss...
I think you'll find Finland in particular doesn't have much innocent bliss regards Russia and some history there.
nuclear weapons are one of those insidious technologies that are almost self-replicating in a sense, because if your enemy has nukes it strongly behooves one to either also have nukes or to buddy up with someone who has them. Opting out entirely is very difficult once the genie is out of the bottle
I live in Norway and I agree we should have a nuclear deterrent, however this article feels like navel gazing, it’s long, projecting and speculative.
What is not discussed well is delivery systems, which we are lacking for second strike capability… submarines or complex siloes?
My only wish for the program is that we keep the capability within our control to prevent political overhead and give the current government the ability to destroy the current capabilities at a moment’s notice in case the following govt seems irresponsible. Who knows what we will look like in 200years.
Bring out the Swedish Nuclear Canon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90wcPsxr4H4
Is it time? Maybe. Will they do it? Probably not. The European countries constantly talk and never act. It took the second Russian invasion of Ukraine for them to even barely start to do anything and even now, they are still trying to get the US to continue to be the backbone of their defense strategy. Even as the US takes actions that (in their minds) are ruining that idea, instead of acting, they just complain and condemn.
Even if tomorrow they decided to actual work together and invest in their own capabilities it would be decades before they would be free of the US defense sector and they know it and it's why they are so resistant to the idea. I think you would need to see more aggression by the Russians combined with substantially more shenanigans by the US (more than just bombastic announcements for the sake of grabbing media attention) for that to change because you are talking about trillion dollar investment, every year, for decades to walk a different path.
In Europe we do have some non US weapon systems thankfully. Maybe not as good as the US kit but quite functional on the whole. We've been a bit surprised as long time allies of the US for them to get a president who seems more fond of Russia than the democratic world. I didn't see that one coming.
You do but when it comes to certain critical areas that require very large investments in R&D to get going (space launch, 5th/6th gen fighters, nuclear deterrents, etc.) there is a significant lack of home grown capacity/capability. That's more what I was referring to in the above, you guys have plenty of comparable stuff in many areas.
Let me tell you, you folks weren't the only ones caught off guard by the current American political leadership. I think Europe is still betting this is more theater than anything and things will move back towards baseline in the long run, which I think is a fair bet, but I do wish they would hedge that bet a bit more than they are currently.
I find it funny that everyone complains that Europeans currently just talk and never act.. Every time Europeans acted, it ended in either a world war, of half of the war colonized.. So not sure if you really want Europeans to act..
I'm not sure how we went from the "act" being "invest in their own defense" to "start ww3" but I am quite confident no one is complaining they are not doing that, lol.
Best time was over 70 years ago. Second best time was 69 year ago. But currently best is now.
This is a fantastic idea to trigger the truly unthinkable: a war between the "Nordics" and the two European nuclear states.
Relevant detailed paper;
The Domestic Politics of Nuclear Choices — A Review Essay by Elizabeth N. Saunders (pdf) - https://profsaunders.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/saunders...
Russia is genocidal, US unreliable and erratic. The civilized world needs nukes. Not only the Nordic countries, but also Germany and Poland. Unless Russia and US are willing to give up theirs ;)
Canada too. Front and center with Russia and the US.
Canada has all of the resources too; SK is the 2nd largest source of uranium in the world.
> Unless Russia and US are willing to give up theirs
I think you’re missing a few other countries
Germany? Hell no. We need CE + Nordics to have a unified front and to keep West and East in check. Nordics + Poland + Czech Rep + Ronania and maybe a few smaller countries is the sweet spot.
Yes I would not feel safe with nukes in Germany
Time for a Nordic nuke is at least from 2008.
This is what Trump's dismantling of US power has brought us to. Our soon-to-be-former allies can't count on US nuclear deterrence to protect them, because not only is the US unreliable, but they might be the ones attacking.
We're in crazy-town because of Trump and the Republicans, with very real consequences.
They should never have relied on US nuclear deterrence to begin with, even if we were perfectly-model allies. Single points of failure are worth remediating, preferably before crises.
France has nukes.
As does the UK.
But the collapse of the EU/US relationship means you probably want to plan for the potential of a similar collapse within the European alliances.
The UK buys its nukes from the US, so it's not really independent. (As I recall, the UK doesn't even have free choice on where those nukes are targeted).
It buys the launch missiles from the US, the submarines and the warheads are home-grown.
I think the opposite. It straightens incentives to cooperate.
IIRC the UK has committed its nuclear weapons to defend NATO countries.
> IIRC the UK has committed its nuclear weapons to defend NATO countries.
So has the US, which is part of why this is so odd of an approach. Technically we’re required to nuke ourselves if we attack Greenland.
Not enough to be a deterrent. Until now NATO implicitly relied on the USA as their deterrent. That seems to no longer be a smart thing to do.
> Not enough to be a deterrent
Even if American defences stopped 80% of them, estimates say France has enough (290*(1-0.8)=58) to destroy every state capital.
Is more really necessary, if the goal is simply to deter?
France kicked the US military out of France in 1966 and left NATO's military command structure.
They largely rejoined in 2009 (and very deliberately never rejoined NATO's Nuclear Planning Group), but if any NATO member is capable of going it alone on this one, it's probably France.
240 nukes on subs is plenty to wave around as a stick, too.
France and maybe Poland are the only sovereign countries in Europe.
One is enough. Two were enough the last time they were used in war, and those were much smaller than current weapons.
it's easy to lay the state of the US at the feet of the GOP, but Democratic leadership has been ineffectual for decades, either by continuing GOP policies ala Bill Clinton's continuing the Reaganite policy of deregulation into the 90s or Obama's continuing Dubya-era policies in the war on terror or in simply throwing up their hands in defeat ala the Biden DoJ completely dropping the ball wrt the Jan 6th and Trump investigations or Schumer today being damn-near worthless in offering even the appearance of resistance to the dismantling of the liberal democratic apparatus of the US government.
The Democratic Party is merely the other half within the narrow confines of allowed political discourse in the mainstream. I won't go so far as to say they're controlled opposition but it is very clear that they have had no intentions of upsetting the status quo for a very long time and it has lead to the what is currently happening today.
staymad, nerds; if you think Daddy Democrat is saving the day, you are in for a rude awakening
The lesson from Ukraine is resounding Yes.
Any country (this includes both democracies and petty dictatorships) which wishes to be safe and independent must get nukes and means of delivery now.
Yes.
Russia will be prepared to launch another attack in just a few years after the war on Ukraine ends and the US cannot be relied upon.
In fact, it's even worse as the US may end up as the enemy!
It's time to disarm Russia.
Edit: to be more clear: I can't believe that after 4 fucking years, a hostile nation is still permitted to wage war against a sovereign country.
The Russo-Ukrainian war started with an invasion 12 years ago at the end of next month, not 4.
People go back and forth on this. When they are trying to sound "very smart", they'll insist "well actually, the Russians invaded in 2014!"
But something fundamentally different happened in 2022.
Remember, Zelensky was elected on a platform of negotiating with Russia for the dispossessed territory. That was acceptable 2014 - but certainly not now.
> People go back and forth on this.
No, I think what you have is mostly different people saying different things, not people going back and forth.
> But something fundamentally different happened in 2022.
Yes, an escalation in the level of conflict from the Russian side intended to bring a rapid conclusion of the war happened in 2022.
Absolutely right.
"permitted"
What exactly do you think their response to attempted forcible disarmament would be?
frankly I think much less than people assume. Obviously nuclear weapons need to be taken seriously but we should have taken a much more muscular posture ages ago.
There's this mental cold war image of these people grinding it out to the Armageddon but in reality the entire Russian leadership has their children living in the cities they're threatening. Putin has a daughter that manages an art gallery in Paris. Bullies back down when you punch back and that's the much better framing of modern day rogue actors.
Permitted? What’s your plan to stop them without triggering Armageddon?
Back in the day Biden could have said we're protecting Ukraine - invading troops will be bombed by the USAF, rather than the actual - well if you only invade a little bit we won't do much.
Now the west is mostly trying to bankrupt Russia which isn't going too badly. Oil's being kind of blocked and they've sold 71% of their gold to keep things going but that'll run out. https://united24media.com/latest-news/russia-liquidates-71-o...
How do you disarm a bully with the nuclear capacity to blow half of the world if not more?
At the fall of the USSR, Coca-Cola should have bartered soda with Russia for the nukes. After all, the Cola Wars were heating up even as the Cold War looked to be ending, and Pepsi had a superior navy, bartered from the USSR with soda, and Coke could have used a nuclear deterent.
Have the CIA turn enough insiders that one of them succeeds in assassinating Putin after a propaganda campaign raising up an opposition party ready to take over in an election/coup (mixture of both really). Have a weak and friendly leader installed that exchanges nukes for population support and possibly brakes up Russia into several smaller states.
When the USSR broke up, Ukraine gave up its nukes in exchange for security guarantees (lot of good that has done them)
You act like this is a stroll in the park. I would be willing to bet that this is essentially impossible
Tell me you honestly think what is happening in America right now isn't the outcome of long planning by Russian intelligence (and likely other intelligence services). Their plan was to install a leader they had chosen and influenced.
Also Epstein was probably also a spy, but more likely for Mossad. BIG COINCIDENCE he was so close with dear leader?
Then tell me you think that doing things in Russia isn't possible.
Ukraine gave up more than nukes, it forfeited future membership in russian federation and nato. All the ridiculous bush-era bluster about nato membership for ukraine was in itself a (minor) violation of budapest memo.
Reasonable observers don't think ukraine could have kept russia's nukes, firstly because they were russia's and not ukraine's, and secondly because a country with less than $100B economy (in shambles at the end of the ussr) can't afford to maintain nuclear surety. Additionally, it's very unclear whether any nukes would have been employed by now. Any nuclear attack on russia would result in total annihilation, and if ukraine could only strike a few high-value targets in exchange, it's not a winning weapon or even a deterrent.
Finally the rest of the thesis above is likely to result in a wave of assassinations and sabotage across europe and a wider war that almost all parties have sought to avoid. It's a fever dream shared by angry dummies who are completely incapable of rational thought.
>Reasonable observers don't think ukraine could have kept russia's nukes, firstly because they were russia's and not ukraine's, and secondly because a country with less than $100B economy (in shambles at the end of the ussr) can't afford to maintain nuclear surety. Additionally, it's very unclear whether any nukes would have been employed by now. Any nuclear attack on russia would result in total annihilation, and if ukraine could only strike a few high-value targets in exchange, it's not a winning weapon or even a deterrent.
I'm not saying that at the time it wasn't the best course of action. Something other than what happened may have been possible and may have been an improvement, but it certainly would give any future nations considering giving up their nukes a significant pause.
>Finally the rest of the thesis above is likely to result in a wave of assassinations and sabotage across europe and a wider war that almost all parties have sought to avoid. It's a fever dream shared by angry dummies who are completely incapable of rational thought.
Again, this is the method that you would use to do it. If it were a good idea it would likely already be done. I'm not saying it's a good consequence-free course of action, that wasn't the question.
How do envision we might disarm an adversary with thousands of nuclear missiles, other than by preemptively nuking them and hoping they don't respond in time. Not really a plausible plan.
Russia can be collapsed just like USSR did.
This time around we must demand that it fully gives up WMDs before any help or humanitarian aid reaches it.
They haven’t been disarmed because they have nuclear weapons.
>I can't believe that after 4 fucking years, a hostile nation is still permitted to wage war against a sovereign country.
Then you're not paying attention. They have nukes, europe needs their gas, and the other major powers don't care about what they're doing to Ukraine.
America doesn't have hegemony any longer and its leaders and people have been subjugated by foreign powers intelligence actions.
> europe needs their gas
Needed, past tense. The hold-outs today want it, they do not need it.
There's still concern about the nukes though.
... European gas+LNG consumption has gone down by 2/3 and has largely been replaced by Americans and our president has openly threatened to steal territory from a NATO ally through force.
It's not exactly like Europe is in a comfortable place energy-wise nor can it say it doesn't need energy from any current supplier.
you also need submarines to have a "credible" second strike deterrent. It's not enough to just have a bomb.
Submarines are one of several options for this.
Rockets, submarines, aircraft, or even a nuke in a container ship parked in a big harbor work.
China's recent container ship weaponization efforts are .. interesting - https://www.twz.com/sea/chinese-cargo-ship-packed-full-of-mo...
Reminds me of the Rapid Dragon missile system the US uses to weaponize cargo planes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system)
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poseidon_(unmanned_underwater_...
I'd fully expect China and the US to be working on such things.
Delivery of nuclear weapon via shipping container might seem like a deterrent but it's kind of the opposite thing.
For something to be a deterrent it must have a few properties. Delivery taking a non-zero amount of time and producing a gigantic visible ordeal from outer space is a feature here. A container bomb going off somewhere in a civilian logistics chain is a surprise. Surprises cannot be deterrent by their very definition. The inability to ~instantly attribute the attack to some party would only invite additional instability.
The deterrence aspect is having nukes your adversary can't be certain of getting rid of on a preemptive strike.
You don't have to have them on a container ship. You need the credible threat of being able to do so.
Container ships tend to be fairly slow to respond and may not function as expected during a nuclear war.
The only way for this to work as a retaliatory measure is to have the weapons already in place at the target locations. Now, imagine if someone were to discover the weapon and trace it back to whomever installed it. This is effectively a slow motion nuclear exchange that was initiated by the "defender".
The point of this particular sort of deterrence is to prevent a decapitation strike by an opponent who thinks they can knock them all out.
"Yeah, you can drop bunker busters on the silos you know about, but six months later one of your cities evaporates."
The five big nuclear powers use subs for this, but it's hardly the only option.
Or missile systems constantly moved around on roads, railroads, or underground tunnels. And there’s also “launch on warning.”
Or just a big enough nuke in the frozen northern tundra, one large enough to cause nuclear winter for the whole world.
Or a fleet of TELs roaming the uninhabited regions.
Sweden already has good submarines https://www.19fortyfive.com/2025/05/cheap-100000000-submarin...
Also used to run a nuclear weapons program back in the day[1]. Though, to be honest, I think it'd be politically impossible to revive today. There's barely political will to build new nuclear power.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_nuclear_weapons_progra...
I do not think that nuclear power is viewed same as nuclear war heads. One is perceived as potentional ecological catasprophe and the second one as a weapon of retaliation.
I honestly don't think most people understand either. Younger generations are a bit more open minded, but for a lot of people who lived through the news reports of Cs137-fallout from Chernobyl raining down on them, nuclear anything is represents an invisible and scary boogyman.
I like this explanation why people in old soviet block tent much more to support nuclear energy. When Chernobyl accident happened, communists we're mainly silent about that but countries which we're affected and had a free press were (rightfully) panicking so general population became scared about the use of nuclear as a energy source.
And launch vehicles.
I get why they would want them but it seems so clear to me that the world is going to end in fire
Well, the Nordic countries are already pretty well prepared for the alternative of ice.
The fact that all the trains stop going if it snows slightly more than usual would indicate that they are in fact not prepared at all.
As a Swede we don't have the competence or expertise anymore. We did have at one time and we tried to make the bomb.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_nuclear_weapons_progra...
Everything is service or finance economy now. Nobody cares about science sadly (me included).
It's all Netflix & TikTok, Foodora scrolling until the end now.
Nordic countries have had nuclear power plants for half a century.
If they don't have a sufficient secret stock pile of nuclear weapons already, then they have been utter and total fools.
If they don't have secret nuclear weapons in orbit, they have been severely irresponsible.
Let's hope the plans of their leaders is not to send all young men as infantry to the meat grinder to die for a country which hates them, like they are doing in the Ukraine war. But who knows? Life is full of surprises.
Typically the point of nuclear deterrence is to brag about your capabilities, not keep them secret.
It probably doesn't hurt to have your opponent worry that your capabilities are secretly even more effective than openly stated, though.
What we can hope for is a situation similar to Israel, where they "officially" don't admit to having nuclear arms, but everybody knows they do.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p6uxLHWVYRg
A lot more countries then expected had or almost had the bomb.
Yes please.
No, seriously, the reason the world is messed up now is that only some powers have monopoly on nuclear weapons. And every single one of the major powers is internationally in an aggressive, expansive mood.
We could have had a world without nuclear escalation.
But the last 4 years have shown that if as a country and nation you don’t have a nuclear umbrella, you don’t have recognised sovereignty and hence cannot do the single most important duty a state has - to protect the human rights of it’s citizens.
So I’m afraid the lot of the non-nuclear countries is either nuke up, or lick the boot.
Following Betteridges Law the answer is of course No
No. Nei.
Instead of nukes, maybe another massive pandemic super virus that kills off half the population of humans on Earth wouldn’t be so bad.
to your point, historically mumps neutered some infected men. i don't know how one could calculate how much population was prevented by mumps before vaccines, though.
This article is so batty it's hard to take seriously. The Nordics are not going to be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. I know the UNSC seems toothless most of the time, but on this issue they are united.
> I know the UNSC seems toothless most of the time, but on this issue they are united.
The UNSC has long been toothless on this issue; see North Korea.
Any nation launching any nuke has the potential to eliminate most life on earth. Limited nuclear war is very unlikely. This is a nightmare.
Please read Nuclear War: A Scenario, a book by Annie Jacobsen that discusses the insanity of nuclear war.