The Merz Declaration

By

Vice Admiral (Retd) Vijay Shankar

Scramble for the Nazi Atomic Bomb: A Stunted Programme

In the years leading up to World War II, Germany was at the forefront of theoretical and experimental physics pertaining to atomic energy. By the winter of 1938, German physicist Otto Hahn had discovered the physical reaction of nuclear fission after bombarding Uranium with neutrons. This discovery showed the Nazi government that weapons of mass destruction could be created from relatively small matter, leading them to recognise the awesome potential for devastation of nuclear chain reactions when engineered for military application. Werner Heisenberg (a contemporary) regarded as one of the most important nuclear physicists in history calculated that nuclear fission chain reactions when slowed down and controlled in a “uranium machine” (nuclear reactor), generate energy; when uncontrolled, the outcome was a “nuclear explosion” many times more powerful than conventional explosives. After Heisenberg reported that the enrichment of U-235 in Uranium was the best and only way to create explosives exponentially stronger than any every seen before, Hitler launched his atomic weapon programme. However, months later Heisenberg told the Nazi Weapons Bureau that an atomic bomb could not be built until 1945 and even then would demand a massive amount of critical resources and investments be diverted to the project. The uncertainties involved and the strategic situation in 1942 relegated priority of the programme.  

Despite availability of core intellectual theoretical resources, the failure of Germany to weaponize an atomic device may be attributed to three causes: the absence of a dedicated team of nuclear engineers resulting in the inability to rapidly realise the accessories; paucity of industrial support and significant investment to drive the project at the desired pace; lowering priority of the programme.

Restraints on German Nuclear Weapons Programme Post World War II  

As part of the accession negotiations of West Germany to the Western European Union at the London and Paris Conferences, the country was forbidden (by Protocol No III to the revised Treaty of Brussels of 23 October 1954 and Article VII of the Brussels Treaty of 1948) to possess or manufacture nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, with the proviso that the USA would stand guarantor of that nation’s  security. However, West Germany was plagued by doubts of whether they would in fact be left defenceless should a nuclear threat arise from the USSR.

By 1967, relations between the United States and West Germany were difficult because Washington was urging Bonn to support the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), which many conservatives in the ruling coalition opposed on grounds that the treaty was discriminatory by permanently denying West Germany the nuclear option. Then Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger was troubled that even if Moscow did not “intend to use threats or blackmail against Germany, the situation could change” and Germany “must consider how we could defend ourselves.” Against West German protestations of their need for nuclear weapons was the determined stand of the USSR that “we will not allow the Federal Republic of Germany to possess nuclear weapon”.

Germany since the onset of the Cold War has been under the “Nuclear Umbrella” provided by the  NATO Alliance, specifically by the USA. And Germany, on her part, has participated in the NATO nuclear weapons sharing arrangements and trains for strategic preparation and launch of nuclear weapons. United Germany is also restricted by the “Two plus Four Treaty” that supplanted the Potsdam Agreement of 1945. The Treaty prohibits nuclear rearmament of reunified Germany.

The Leaky Nuclear Umbrella

In February 1947, an exhausted, broke and heavily in debt Britain conveyed to the US State Department two diplomatic messages: one on Greece, the other on Turkey. Confessing that it could no longer continue its support for the Greek government forces that were fighting an armed Communist insurgency, Britain had announced plans to pull out of India and to wind down its presence in West Asia. The United States perceived an immediate threat of Greece and Turkey falling into Soviet control; and with it, potentially, the Suez Canal.

Almost overnight, the United States stepped into the vacuum left by the departing British. Declaring, “it must be a policy of the United States, to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure.” It was the start of what became known as the Truman Doctrine. On the face of it was the idea that helping to defend democracy was vital to the United States’ national interests; however, the significance was, transition of leadership of the Western world from Britain to the United States, and so Europe has been protected by an American nuclear umbrella  since the atomic blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was the United States that promised NATO allies that any nuclear threat or aggression by the Soviet Union, and later, by Russia, would be deterred and, should the need arise, answered by the U.S. in kind. Today that partnership teeters on a razor’s edge as Trump’s America seeks rapprochement with Moscow. For with reconciliation between the two nuclear super powers comes a commitment to bring the Ukraine conflict to immediate closure, deny that hapless country membership of NATO; and in its wake stimulate a potential break-up of the post-World War II and post USSR order in Europe.   

Reports are today emerging that Ukraine had survived the three years of a sapping war on account of an American partnership that was intricately enmeshed at the operational level and involved continuously in the planning process, providing real time intelligence and the movement of massive logistic support. The partnership at every stage not only controlled the progress of operations but also extended to clandestine specialised backup. In addition the Partnership also suggested that “Armageddon” would ensue should Russia contemplate nuclear use.

With the current US administration, the nature of the Partnership and with it, the bonds that held together NATO’s common posture towards the conflict, now lie cloven in tatters. The rift in the transatlantic security relationship has today ruptured to what appears an unbridgeable chasm.

Deepening Rift in Transatlantic Security Relationships

The Chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz government, rattled by the prospect of America  withdrawing security guarantees in the wake of a possible Russia-Ukraine peace treaty, is preparing a fundamental readjustment of Germany’s defence posture. Declaring the US indifferent to the continent’s fate, Merz “questioned the future of NATO and demanded Europe boost its own defences. German’s sense of deep domestic insecurity prompted him to suggest that he’d look to France and Britain to form a European nuclear umbrella, to replace US guarantees”; despite knowing full well that both countries sorely lacked capability, commitment and control to provide such a shield.

In truth, no alternatives exist ever since both France and the UK disavowed the deployment of land or air based vectors outside their borders. Even their existing sea-based deterrent lacks credibility without US surveillance and support infrastructure; as a matter of fact the UK deterrent, based on the “Trident D5” SLBN, is critically dependant on arsenal and vital infrastructure located in the USA and the platform the 4xVanguard class of SSBNs were due for retirement by 2024; their replacement the “Dreadnought” class is not expected in service for another decade (first of Class keel laid in March 2025). As for the French Deterrent Force, it is based on 4xTroimphant class SSBNs and Rafale fighter bombers. It is therefore, a mistake for Merz, to assume that the Anglo-French nuclear arsenal could replace American guarantees.

Clearly, the suggestion was that the weight of the German economy could lend leadership and control to a potential joint nuclear deterrent. The indications are more than discernable that Merz is counselling a limited shared nuclear deterrent. Are we on the threshold of witnessing the emergence of Germany as the latest in a looming string of nuclear armed nations?

Collapse of a Nuclear Theology

Since 1946, a nuclear theology crafted on the argument, that “atomic weapons were useful only as a deterrent to prevent war” (Bernard Brodie, The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order); a canonic conviction that laid the foundation of the nuclear deterrence theory is, today, in the throes of collapse. Is deterrence no longer a milestone on the road to nuclear disarmament? Is Germany embarking on the resurrection of a long buried programme that could sound the death knell for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and in its fallout expose the hypocrisy of “Extended Deterrence”? And what becomes of the assurance to non-nuclear allies, who having abjured nuclear weapons, find themselves denuded of U.S. nuclear security guarantees? What is equally astounding is the naïveté of the allies to hold faith in the belief that America would shoulder the responsibility of putting its own forces, population and territory, at risk on behalf of an ally with neither a quid-pro-quo nor castling arrangement. Are we missing something here?

Was the upholding of ‘extended deterrence’ the price of leadership and indeed, the ‘exceptionalism’ that the USA enjoyed since the end of World War II? Has the global hegemon abdicated its responsibility?

‘With NATO or With Nuclear Weapons’: Ukraine’s Delusional Defiance

Post the controversial tongue lashing that the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky received in the White House on 28 February 2025 along with the stipulation that neither was there place for Ukraine in the NATO nor would there be a continuation of US weapons supplies; Zelensky has, reportedly, returned to his  defiant  declaration, ‘Ukraine in NATO or nuclear weapons’. Ukraine possesses the capability to build a nuclear bomb. It could utilise spent plutonium fuel from its civilian nuclear power reactors, estimated at approximately seven tons together with its longstanding expertise in nuclear physics dating back to Soviet times, Ukrainian scientists would face minimal technical barriers in developing nuclear weapons. However, the country lacks the necessary reprocessing facilities to extract and weaponise this material. Adapting existing Ukrainian missile platforms for nuclear delivery would, however, pose minimal technical challenges, as the country already manufactures several missiles that could be modified to carry a nuclear warhead.

An indigenous Ukrainian nuclear programme would face critical ramifications from its allies and expose strategic vulnerabilities. Loss of strategic support will be a reality if Ukraine pursues nuclear weapons; jeopardising both military and financial aid. There is also the near certainty of the Kremlin’s pre-emptive retaliation due to its stated hypersensitivity to nuclearisation of a bordering state.   

Amidst this confounding situation, Poland stands out as Ukraine’s staunchest confederate. Is there a possibility that a nuclear axis builds between the two to generate an independent nuclear deterrent?  After all, such a move involving a NATO member not only compounds nuclear risks but also holds the promise of invoking the principle of collective defence, dragging a reluctant Alliance into the conflict.

One of the possible fall-outs of the deepening rift within the transatlantic alliance and the collapse of the American strategic nuclear umbrella is the “folding up” of NATO.

End of a Nuclear Heresy

Alarmingly, as nuclear armed nations toy with the idea that, the hitherto doctrines of a limited nuclear war and nuclear coercion  are no longer heretical policies; they fail to note the perilous impact it has on potential target nations. In the quest for security against nuclear coercion or the incipient menace of a looming ‘limited’ nuclear war, it will not be unusual for non-nuclear weapon states to consider developing arsenals of their own. Such action would undermine longstanding non-proliferation efforts and not only increase the chances of stumbling into a nuclear holocaust but, the absence of a credible nuclear hegemon would stimulate incessant anxiety of looming devastation.    

In a chilling statement that captured sensitivity to the ominous signs of a breakdown of the existing nuclear order, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in January 2025 declared that the Doomsday Clock had moved by a second from 90 to 89 seconds to midnight. The Clock is a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to global catastrophe caused by man-made technologies. Will the breakdown of extended deterrence and consequent nuclear proliferation be the tipping point that makes the likelihood of nuclear catastrophe not just a possibility but a probable reality?

America’s Liberation Day: Has Atlas Shrugged?

To add chaos to an already dangerously confused nuclear development; the early April 2025 pronouncement of Liberation Day in America sounded more a declaration of trade war against virtually the entire world. The notion of American exceptionalism that the US is a global exemplar of democracy, security and a convincing global nuclear regulator; is today precariously poised on very thin ice.  

America’s “Liberation Day” may be seen from two perspectives; the first is that decades of open U.S. markets has provided an incentive for unbalanced foreign tariffs and other protectionist measures that prevented the import of U.S. goods. “Only aggressive retaliation can reverse the damage and bring manufacturing back to American shores” is the battle cry declared by the Trump administration; some countries have retaliated by corresponding increase in tariffs on American imports, while others have been more subtle in their response; such as Japan which is the largest holder of US treasury bonds and its largest investor, has transferred a large bulk of their capital investments from the US to markets in China, India and the ASEAN countries. And more importantly, it has also chosen to trade with other partners in bi-lateral currencies; renouncing the USD.

The second perspective is founded on the faulty premise of the first, that manufacturing will, in fact, return and as a natural consequence permit tax cuts within the US. Unfortunately what is being sought is a denial of the reality that, the deliberate move-out of labour intensive manufacturing to China and the other developing economies, was the primary cause of the dazzling growth of the US economy over the last half century. To illustrate, in 1970 the American GDP was $1tr and by 2023 rocketed to $27tr. It was this very reality that won America the Cold War; caused the collapse of the Soviet economy; propelled the surge of its economy as it rapidly transited from an industrial to a service and technology driven economy. To turn back the clock and reinvent a manufacturing economy will only result in the diminution of the world’s sole hegemon. The macro downside to “Liberation Day” as the US administration attempts to completely turn the world trading system topsy-turvy in order to bring about , what it perceives as reciprocity and justice; is the  shrugging off  the burden of world leadership.

 An Understanding as a Conclusion

The ability to retract from the idea that nuclear weapons are a useable coercive tool of the state is linked to three larger concessions: the State will not be the first to use nuclear weapons; the State will neither aid nor abet the proliferation of nuclear weapons and lastly a firm belief in the larger idea of global nuclear regulation. The first two are based on the conviction that the weapon is an ultimate resort of dissuasion; while the third places a demand for ‘nuclear order’. This understanding flows from Brodie’s postulation that, the only purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear war. However, the global impact of recent policies relating to the on-going war in Ukraine and the emergence of new nuclear armed states; appear aimed at instilling fear and a willingness to persistently push the adversary to the nuclear brink. At a time when the end of an era of US led nuclear regulation signals the breakdown of the current nuclear order and a quick march forward of the Doomsday Clock.  

Policy makers do not appear to recognise the need for avoiding a nuclear conflagration. Simultaneously the meltdown of a world economic order that gave space for a global hegemon lies vacant. This throws up a paradoxical question; will the possession of a nuclear arsenal make the world a safer place? It is true that the balance of nuclear arsenals have deterred a global scale catastrophe (thus far at least); yet it is equally true, that its coercive effect and the absence of a regulatory regime increase the probability of proliferation that may push nuclear war from catastrophic loss of life to existential closure.

The choice is clear.