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Comment by mongol | Hacker News Reader

If the US rhetoric continues it will not be long until you will see some currently non-nuclear EU countries start talking about contingency options. It will take a while, but it is good to remember that the reason there are so few nuclear weapons states is not because it is terribly hard, but because states have abstained for the global good and benefit of non-proliferation. This with the implied protection from states that have it.

If that no longer holds, then we enter a new era where non-proliferation will be history.

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I think already at this point, that there will be several more nuclear states in Europe (inside EU) in the not so distant future.

Many of the countries already have certified delivery platforms, or have ordered them.

Of course, we're treading in new waters and it's completely unknown if any existing contracts and treaties will be honoured anymore, but that concern will be secondary to this, I think.

I say it is a secondary concern because 1. basically any European nation can put together a delivery system, ballistic or cruising, should they have to; and 2. creating the weapon itself is not really that big of an undertaking for a modern high-technology nation state level actor.

My bet is that we will see Poland to become the next nuclear weapons state. Possibly in collaboration with some neighbours around the Baltic Sea. Who knows, maybe Ukraine joins

The United States Intelligence Complex will never ever let that happen, instead we will give them an option to have our own nuclear warheads which can be equipped to a US operated aircraft on their soil just like it is in the Netherlands. The most important thing is the the Polish Government cannot independently target using a nuclear warhead the targeting and the decision to launch should always be made by the US(i.e. A US 4 star general just like how it is in NATO)

How would they prevent it? Using military force? Because if it becomes an existential question, the drive to achieve it will be very high. Also, the intelligence complex has failed to stop countries like North Korea, so I don't think they are allmighty in choosing who can get it or not. The status quo is a consensus. We will see what happens when allies to the US sense the relationship has fundamentally changed.

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