WSJ What’s News - Trump Prompts Rethink of Nuclear-Weapons Deals

Episode Date: April 13, 2025

Amid doubts about Washington’s commitment to defending its allies, countries in Europe and elsewhere are asking whether America’s nuclear umbrella offers enough protection from Russia and countries looking to build their arsenals, such as North Korea and Iran. WSJ reporter Laurence Norman and Marion Messmer, senior research fellow at Chatham House, discuss what might drive some countries to seek the protection of others or consider building their own nukes. Then, Debak Das, assistant professor at the University of Denver, shares the proliferation risks of a renewed arms race, and what the process of actually building a nuclear program could look like. Luke Vargas hosts. Further Reading  Trump Prompts European Calls for a Homegrown Nuclear Umbrella The Bomb Is Back as the Risk of Nuclear War Enters a New Age  Trump’s Embrace of Putin Has Germany Thinking of Nuclear Weapons  Iran Has Enough Highly Enriched Uranium for Six Nuclear Weapons  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey What's News listeners, it's Sunday, April 13th. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal and this is What's News Sunday, the show where we tackle the big questions about the biggest stories in the news by reaching out to our colleagues across the newsroom to help explain what's happening in our world. And this week, as the US and Iran renew talks over Tehran's nuclear program, could we be at the dawn of a new nuclear arms race? It's a question surfacing the world over, as countries in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East question whether America's nuclear umbrella offers enough protection,

and which is driving some to seek out the protection of others, or consider building their own nukes. We'll look at who's scoping out new nuclear deterrents, the proliferation risks of a renewed arms race, and what the process of actually building a nuclear program would look like in 2025. A little later on, we will be joined by nuclear weapons expert, Debach Das, to discuss the practical details of going nuclear. But first, let me introduce journal reporter Lawrence Norman, and from the London thinktank Chatham House, senior research fellow Marion Messmer, an expert in arms control and nuclear weapons policy.

Lawrence, let me start with you, just to set the stage here, walk us through what we have been hearing specifically from US allies in Europe about their interest in new deterrence options on the nuclear front. So I think the first thing to say is that this change so far is incremental. There is not a sudden race to nuclear arms taking place across the world. What we've heard in Europe is in Germany, a country that has never really considered nuclear weapons, there is some talk on the margins of do we need to do this. Significantly, we've heard France talk about extending its nuclear umbrella using the nuclear weapons that it has to defend its European

allies and there is some interest and there are some conversations around how that would work. This obviously comes at a time when there is a great deal of concern that the Trump administration is less interested in NATO and less interested in defending Europe's security. JS In terms of actual new nuclear programs, is there anything more than just talk here? We've heard some rumblings from Poland, Turkey as well, countries thinking about maybe creating their own programs. Could that happen?

I guess it could happen in theory, but one of the things that's really important to keep in mind is that the big constraints that all of these states have is the Nonproliferation Treaty, right? So in that agreement, they all essentially agreed not to develop their own nuclear weapons. And a big risk that we're seeing here is that all of those discussions around the potential for nuclear weapons could also actually end up destabilizing the nonproliferation treaty, which wouldn't be a good thing for global security. And then of course, there's also the technical constraint, which is that developing a nuclear program is something that would take a lot of time and would take

a lot of investment. And so because all of these states are essentially needing to scale up their armies and so on, there's also a big trade-off between investing in a new nuclear program, which would be a huge cost sink at first and balancing that with buying perhaps more off-the-shelf conventional capabilities. Nat. Marion, you'd already alluded there to some of the alternative options to creating a new nuclear program, namely countries seeking out France to be protected by its nuclear umbrella. What about the UK, another European power that has nukes? Well, interestingly, UK nuclear weapons already protect NATO member states as well. People

usually focus on, when they think about extended deterrence in Europe, they usually focus on the four deployed nuclear weapons that the US has stationed in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Turkey, and Italy. But the UK nuclear arsenal already protects NATO as such. So that means every day that the nuclear submarine is at sea, it's just down to the UK prime minister to decide whether nuclear weapons are launched or not. So if the US was to decide that it no longer wants to maintain that cooperation with the UK, the UK wouldn't immediately fall off a cliff edge.

It would still have some time to figure out what it needs to do, but it would essentially in the longer term needs to figure out how to service those missiles. Lawrence, shift us over to South Korea and Japan, if you could. I know talk, especially in Seoul, is growing louder about potentially pursuing a nuclear arms program there. If there is a single country that is at this stage, most likely to go for a nuclear weapon because of its concerns about US support,

it is probably South Korea. They've talked about it over the last couple of years. They also had a program in the past that was dabbling in nuclear weapons. There are US officials who are expected to be quite high up in the Trump administration who have encouraged South Korea to think about the nuclear option because the US doesn't want to have a large defense commitment and tens of thousands of troops bogged down in South Korea in the future if it's going to face off with China.

Aaron Norris Marion, that South Korean pivot seems like a consequential one. Add that to some of the other countries we've already mentioned. And I'm curious, what is the feeling in the arms control community as it watches these trends we've been discussing? Maryam Kassam It's hugely concerning, of course. Those countries might all have real security concerns, but the challenge is that if they were to develop nuclear weapons, it would also have a knock-on effect on the security concerns of their neighbors. So my worry would essentially be that if we

have additional countries developing nuclear weapons for their own security concerns, which might be perfectly legitimate, we end up in a global environment that is essentially much more insecure because we have more nuclear weapons to go around. We have more nuclear armed states that would essentially need to take each other into account when they make various strategic calculations. And we also can absolutely foresee that, like if, for example, Turkey was to acquire nuclear weapons, then Iran would probably also want to finish its nuclear acquisition. And then Saudi Arabia might also actually want to acquire nuclear weapons. And we also need to keep in mind that we've been really

lucky not to have ended up in a nuclear war so far. But the more nuclear armed states you have, the greater your chance that a war between any one of them is going to go nuclear at some point. What should we be watching for next? Iran. They are very, very close. Some people think that they could put together some kind of crude missile in a matter of two, three months. They could easily choose to develop a nuclear weapon. And as Marion said, if the Iranians do, the Saudis have said they will. The one that we should really worry about is the one

we've been worrying about for 20 years, which is Iran. Marion Messmer is a senior research fellow in the international security program at Chatham House and Lawrence Norman is a Wall Street Journal reporter. Marion, Lawrence, thank you both so much. Thank you. Thank you. All right, we've got to take a very short break, but when we come back, how would a country go about building a nuclear weapons program?

And if the goal is to reduce reliance on the US, is it possible without American technology and equipment we'll get into that nuclear nitty gritty after the break? Well, let's take the two scenarios that we've discussed so far, countries seeking shelter under another's nuclear umbrella, or creating their own nuclear weapons programs, and learn what that would actually look like in practice. Debak Das is an assistant professor at the Joseph Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, where he researches non-proliferation. Debak, how difficult would it be for France to extend its nuclear umbrella to cover other countries?

We heard earlier about Germany and Poland. Maybe looking into this. So in terms of difficulty, the question is what exactly is it that France is trying to do with a nuclear cover? So if the question is, is it to prevent conventional military attacks by Russia? Then the answer is no. This would be very difficult to prevent. Both India and Pakistan possess nuclear weapons. They still fight conventional wars against each other. Then there's a question of, is it to prevent sub-conventional attacks or land grabs by Russia in Poland or Eastern Europe?

And the answer there again is with strategic weapons, you cannot prevent that. If the goal is to prevent a strategic nuclear strike by Russia on Germany or Poland, that's possible. But then the question is, would that be a credible nuclear umbrella? In theory, there could be a commitment made, which would be an agreement that you could sign with another country. Now, that would not be credible till you have actual forces on the ground or deployments that threaten the adversary. Now, what would those deployments be? France right now has 290 nuclear weapons. It has submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and it has an air-launched cruise missile capability.

That is not going to be enough. France will then have to take those aircraft with air-launched cruise missiles, put them in Germany or put them in Poland. And those are going to come with their own threats because increasing your credibility also increases the threat of escalation. Let's switch then to another option, perhaps what is being considered as we heard earlier in South Korea, maybe Saudi Arabia, which is countries thinking about creating their own nuclear weapons program. What would that process look like in 2025?

The thing to remember with these programs is that there are three technical requisites to have a nuclear weapons program. One, you need the bomb fuel. So you have uranium, you have plutonium, hydrogen bombs need heavy isotopes of hydrogen tritium. The second is you need weaponization. You need to take that bomb fuel and you need to make a warhead. That warhead has to then be small enough, carryable enough, so that you can put it on a means of

delivery. This is the third part, which is putting it on a missile or making sure it's small enough that an aircraft can carry it. These three parts are what create a nuclear weapons program. That's an extremely time consuming process. That could take 15 years, 20 years, past examples of India, of Pakistan, even France's nuclear weapons program for the first 20 years was not a terribly credible one because they couldn't deliver the weapon directly to Moscow. And for countries that are looking to create their own weapons program, can they do that in-house in a truly homegrown capacity without being reliant, let's say, on the US or China or Russia even?

The short answer is no. No country has ever built a nuclear weapons program without external help. Even the US needed help from Germans. The Soviets needed help from the Germans and stolen things from the American programs. So is it possible that other countries might sell certain forms of technology for money? Yes, that could happen amongst second tier nuclear states potentially. As we wrap up this discussion, are we standing at the precipice of a potentially dangerous proliferation moment? I think the security concerns remain. Our concerns have been with security

of the nuclear material itself. Nuclear accidents, command and control issues where you might have a battlefield commander with a tactical nuclear weapon going rogue, a terrorist sabotage, accidental escalation. None of these major issues which we've been talking about for the past 50 years have disappeared. And with new nuclear programs, especially some of the safety and security concerns are higher than countries that have had some sort of standard operating protocol.

They've been dealing with this for a long time. In terms of being on the precipice of a new age of proliferation, we truly are there because you've got so many different countries who are talking about potentially getting different parts of the trifecta I was talking about. I have been speaking to Debach Das, an assistant professor at the Joseph Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Debach, thank you so much for being with us on What's News. Thank you for having me. And that's it for What's News Sunday for April 13th.

Today's show was produced by Charlotte Gartenberg with supervising producer Sondra Kilhoff, and we got help from Deputy Editor Chris Sinzley. I'm Luke Vargas, and we'll be back Monday morning with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.