Poland Exploring Program to ‘Borrow’ US Nukes

NATO Program Allows Nations to 'Share' WMDs

Though government spokesmen later denied the report, Deputy Defense Minister Tomasz Szatkowski confirmed that the ministry has been exploring the possibility of joining a NATO “sharing” program in which they would “borrow” American nuclear weapons.

Already a nation with a substantial military budget, Poland has also been at the center of a series of false predictions of an imminent Russian invasion of central Europe over the past year and a half, with they and the Baltic states believing they are to be the front line of a new World War against Russia.

Though this has so far only amounted to reckless predictions and a lot of rhetoric, allowing Poland to “borrow” substantial amounts of American WMDs might potentially position these eastern NATO members to be more confrontational on the Russian frontier.

An estimated 200 US nuclear weapons are already involved in the “sharing” program, with Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey, and Italy all playing host to arsenals of varying sizes. The nuclear sharing program is broadly agreed to violate the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), which forbids the transfer of direct or indirect control over nuclear weapons between member nations.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.