Anatol Lieven, the Director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, took note of the discomfort in Germany about Scholz’s acceptance of the stationing of U.S. long-range missiles in Germany. Two of the missiles the U.S. plans to station in Germany “are conventionally armed, but nuclear-capable, though to convert them to this role would require a new agreement,” he writes in a commentary posted in Responsible Statecraft. “This agreement however said nothing about whether Germany will have any control over the missiles on its soil.” He also notes that the decision was made without any discussion, parliamentary or otherwise and is widely opposed in Germany’s Eastern states, as seen in the recent results in regional elections.
Lieven also contrasts this plan with the Euromissiles crisis of the 1980s. The 1979 decision to station U.S. nuclear missiles in Europe was taken, Lieven argues, with the intention of reducing the threat of the Soviet SS-20s, which then led to the INF Treaty, and the removal of both the NATO missiles and the SS-20s. There is no such intention this time, not even with respect to the Russian Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad.
“A similar agreement [to the INF Treaty] today, in which the U.S. cancels the planned new missile deployment in Germany in return for Russia withdrawing its missiles based in Kaliningrad and Belarus would be of immense benefit to Germany, Europe and the world. Unfortunately, for the past generation, the entire trajectory of arms control agreements has been in the opposite direction, towards an uncontrolled arms race.
