.jpeg)
The United States is in active discussions with NATO allies about extending its nuclear sharing arrangements to countries on the alliance’s eastern flank, including Poland and the Baltic states. The talks are part of a broader reassessment of nuclear posture in Europe that the Trump administration has accelerated since early 2026, alongside a parallel decision to deploy long-range conventional missiles to Germany.
Nuclear deterrence in Europe has been largely static since the Cold War, structured around the same cluster of bases — Aviano, Büchel, Kleine Brogel, Volkel, Lakenheath — that have hosted US B61 gravity bombs for decades. What is now under discussion is whether that architecture is still credible given Russia’s military posture, its demonstrated willingness to use force in Europe, and its own nuclear signalling. Eastern flank allies, who sit closest to the threat, have been pushing hardest for an answer.
Poland has been the most vocal European ally on the question of nuclear presence. Warsaw has repeatedly argued that the current geography of NATO nuclear sharing — concentrated in Western Europe — does not reflect where the alliance’s deterrence challenge has moved. The Baltic states have backed a similar line. None of these countries currently hosts US nuclear weapons, and under the existing DCA framework, doing so would require both a political decision and significant infrastructure investment. The conversations now underway appear to be exploring whether either or both of those hurdles can be cleared.
The context is important. Russia’s war in Ukraine has fundamentally changed the security calculus for NATO’s eastern members. Countries that for years politely deferred to the alliance’s consensus posture are now making explicit asks. Poland’s defence spending exceeds 4 percent of GDP, the highest in NATO, and Warsaw has framed nuclear hosting as a logical extension of its broader deterrence investments. The Trump administration, which has shown more openness to tailoring deterrence architecture to allied preferences than its predecessors, has not dismissed these requests.
The Germany decision is already locked in. US long-range precision-strike missiles — specifically Tomahawk cruise missiles and Dark Eagle hypersonic missiles — are scheduled to begin deploying to German territory in 2026 under an agreement announced by Berlin and Washington last year. The deployment is explicitly conventional, not nuclear, but its political symbolism is considerable. It is the first time since the Pershing II and cruise missile deployments of the 1980s — which triggered mass protests across Europe — that the US has based long-range strike systems in Germany. The German government has framed it as a deterrence measure, not a provocation, and Chancellor Friedrich Merz has made the deployment a centrepiece of his broader case for robust alliance commitment.
Critics, including some within Germany and across the European left, have argued the deployments undermine the possibility of arms control dialogue with Moscow. Supporters counter that Russia’s own arsenal of forward-deployed strike systems — including Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad and Belarus — has already transformed the conventional balance in Europe, and that Western restraint has not been reciprocated.
The conversation about nuclear sharing in Eastern Europe has moved from think-tank papers to government-to-government discussions, which is a significant shift. It does not mean deployment is imminent — the political, logistical, and consensus hurdles are real. But it does mean that the question is live in a way it has not been since the end of the Cold War. For the EU, which has no formal role in NATO nuclear decisions, this creates an unusual dynamic: member states that also belong to NATO are making defence choices that carry enormous political weight for the EU’s security posture, without any EU-level framework to manage the implications. The long-range missiles to Germany and the nuclear sharing discussions together represent a remilitarisation of continental Europe’s security architecture that is happening faster than European political institutions are ready to process.
