NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that the alliance members are negotiating the deployment of more nuclear weapons because of the growing threat from the Russian Federation and China.
He stated this in an interview with The Telegraph.
According to Stoltenberg, consultations are being held between the members of the Alliance regarding the removal of missiles from storage and bringing them into combat readiness. He called for using transparency as a deterrent in this regard.
“I won’t go into the operational details of how many nuclear warheads should be in combat stock and how many should be in storage, but we should consult on these issues. That’s exactly what we’re doing,” Stoltenberg said.
The NATO Secretary General indicated that nuclear transparency should be a cornerstone of NATO’s nuclear strategy to prepare the Alliance because “a world in which Russia, China and North Korea have nuclear weapons and NATO does not is more dangerous.”
He warned that Beijing, in particular, is investing heavily in modern weapons, including its nuclear arsenal, which Stoltenberg claims will grow to a thousand warheads by 2030.
“And this means that in the near future. NATO may face something that the Alliance has never dealt with before, namely two nuclear potential adversaries – China and Russia. Of course, this has consequences,” the Secretary General added.
He emphasized that the United States and European allies are currently modernizing nuclear deterrents in the face of the growing threat from the Russian Federation.
“The US is modernizing its gravity bombs for nuclear warheads stationed in Europe, and the European allies are modernizing the aircraft to be assigned to the NATO nuclear mission,” Stoltenberg explained.
