Mark my words, in ten years, at least three out of Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Canada will have nuclear weapons.
I am really excited to see a new chapter in nuclear proliferation unfold.
I am really excited to see a new chapter in nuclear proliferation unfold.
I don't see Germany or Canada getting them as they lack domestically owned and manufactured delivery systems (eg. medium/long range ballistic missiles, domestically manufactured nuclear warhead capable jet fighters).
This is why SK and Japan kept investing in ballistic missile and rocketry research. Pakistan did the same in the 1980s and North Korea in the 1990s.
Nuclear weapons without delivery systems are functionally useless in a world where most nuclear powers have second strike and nuclear triad capabilities, so the deterrence aspect of nuclear weapons are DoA.
Germany is not in a position today to start a nuclear program, becuase any nuclear program can be viewed as causus belli for a conventional war, and Germany would not have the ability to develop credible secondary strike capabilities if such a war were to happen in the next 3-5 years.
In addition, Germany lacks a domestic civilian nuclear program due to denuclearization in the 2000s and 2010s - something which Japan or SK DID NOT do.
Imo, it will will take 7-12 years for Germany to reach a point where it's domestic space/ballistics industry is comparable to even Iran's today.
That said, that development and capital might be sped up if defense related opportunities with the KSA are enhanced, because it would provide a massive infusion of capital.
Also, nuclear weapons programs are expensive, and Germany can better use it's capital to build conventional warfighting capabilities that it severely lacks, while remaining assured of France or the UK's nuclear umbrella.
Germany should have started this spending spree 10-15 years ago (which is when most other regional powers like Japan, SK, KSA, UAE, India, Pakistan, etc began doing so), but better late than never.
Germany is severely lagging in dual use technology, and German civilians need to realize that (the leadership does recognize this and hence why a spree of defense manufacting deals with the KSA, UAE, and India began during the Scholz chancellorship). That is the only way Germany can actually build strategic autonomy.
If a country like Germany or Poland wants to build a credible nuclear program that actually has deterrence, then they would need a completely domestically supply chain and vendor for most of their delivery systems, because poltical winds change, and despite the current alignment over Ukraine, countries like France, Germany, and Poland continue to clash over foreign and economic policy (eg. Germany undermining the next-gen tank deal for France, France undermining Eurofighter to protect Dassault, Poland directly opposing sending troops to Ukraine despite France pushing to start a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine).
And this is one of the various reasons why Germany and Poland have not seriously considered a nuclear program during the current defense rush.
The US has made it clear that European security is a European problem.
Most non-nuclear European states cannot go nuclear today as they lack the ability to concurrently rush second strike and nuclear triad capacity without being pulled into a conventional war.
The only major non-nuclear European states I can think of that have this capacity are Turkiye (unsurprising due to competition with Russia, Iran, KSA, and Israel) and Spain (significant MIC that has experience and exports in the Mediterranean - and often competed with the French because of Spanish MIC's co-sell deals with Turkiye).
Reality is, most European countries are 5-10 years behind Asian and Middle Eastern regional powers in rearming - all of whom began in the 2010-14 period due to crises such as South/East China Sea, Himalayas, Syria, Myanmar, Donbass-Crimea, and Libya.
European leaders recognize this, and hence why there has been a flurry of Asia and EMEA defense deals over the past 6 months to help raise capital to begin rebuilding manufacturing capacity, but European HN/Redditors do not realize this (though I've tried bringing up).
The fact that the largest shareholder and launch partner for Europe's replacement for Starlink in Ukraine - Eutelsat Group and Eutelsat OneWeb - is an Indian government aligned conglomerate (Bharti Airtel) starkly shows this issue.
European states that aren't UK, France, Turkiye, and maybe Spain will have to rebuild their conventional capabilities in aerospace, space, naval, and land defense tech first before they can even consider a nuclear option.
That seems hardly relevant considering that other European countries realistically can only acquire nuclear weapons if they have political support from France/UK. In those cases French/British companies would be more than willing to sell whatever equipment they need as well (that’s how Britain got Trident after all..)
Because then you don't actually have autonomy.
If Germany or Poland are dependent on ArianeGroup, then they are dependent on France, who will have a final say on deployment and utilization of it's technology in an offensive manner, and Germany, Poland, and France often don't see eye to eye.
> those cases French/British companies would be more than willing to sell whatever equipment they need as well
And those sales come with stipulations and shutdown options from the French and British government (the Germans do the same with their own weapons programs such as Eurofighter).
In general, a country like Germany or Poland just cannot fully build a nuclear weapons program that could be deterrent, and the money either would spend on such a program just doesn't make sense when there is much lower hanging fruit in conventional warfare.
However my point is that Germany or Poland developing nuclear weapons without direct support of Britain/France is not even worth discussing. It would be infeasible due to a variety of political/military/economic/other reasons. I don’t think that it’s something even would be considering even semi seriously at this point.
Realistically some More centralized EU based nuclear weapon sharing program might be feasible but it’s very far away at this point.
My bet would be on Poland, Japan, and South Korea.
And why is almost no one mentioning Taiwan in these discussions? I am probably missing something, but Taiwan would seem like the most likely candidate, assuming they do not want to be swallowed by China.
Even for a highly industrialized nation, developing nukes is a big project, and all of the upcoming defense spending in the next few years will go to Ukraine and closing some of the gaping holes in conventional forces.
Besides, Germany still has deep-seated qualms about weapons and armed forces; while this is slowly eroding, I don't see it going as far as nuclear armament.
I find it more likely that Poland will possess nukes in ten years; they're geographically closer to Russia, spend more on defense and have more political will.
There is a difference between allowing US weapons under US control (and only to be launched from US planes) to be stationed in the country vs a deeper European collaboration where France stations weapons in Germany for joint European use.
I could imagine that Germany replaces the US warheads with French or even British ones, but not actual ownership of nuclear warheads, nor a situation where a single foreign nation could make the decision to start nukes from German soil without German approval.
Given the regime change in the US, those would be useless if the goal is to deter Russia, wouldn't they?
Why would they need warheads on standby?