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The debate over Germany’s involvement in the United States’ nuclear deterrent in Europe was relaunched on Sunday and sparked riots between the government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, AFP notes.
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One of the two presidents of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), a coalition partner with the Chancellor’s conservatives, was the one who threw the stone into the wasp’s nest.
“I am in a clear position against parking, the availability and, of course, the use of nuclear weapons,” Norbert Walter-Borjans told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Sunday.
Another social democratic leader, Rolf Mützenich, president of the parliamentary group, said that “nuclear weapons on German territory do not strengthen our security, on the contrary.” “It is time for Germany to discard parking in the future,” he told the Tagesspiegel on Sunday.
After a series of electoral disasters, the SPD last year opted for a left turn in its program and chose a party leadership in this regard, represented mainly by these two men.
Its offensive focuses on renewing the German fleet of fighter jets, now made up of soon-to-be-obsolete Tornado jets whose primary mission is to transport American nuclear bombs as part of NATO’s deterrent force in Europe.
The SPD co-chair said he opposed “buying nuclear-powered combat aircraft,” which would mean a radical break with Germany’s Atlantic policy since the end of World War II. It is based on the American nuclear umbrella.
To replace Tornado, Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer recently recommended not only the purchase of 93 European Eurofighter aircraft, but also 45 American F-18s for the transportation of American nuclear bombs. Eurofighter is not designed to do this.
The controversy centers on F-18 aircraft.
Conservatives of Chancellor Angela Merkel have denounced the outrage and considered it unrealistic.
“The SPD is evolving across Nirvana in terms of security policy,” said one of the Conservative MPs, Patrick Sensburg, quoted by the Handelsblatt newspaper.
Social Democrats forget “that nuclear weapons serve primarily for our protection,” he added.
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