Only months after Donald Trump became the federal president
in the U.S., an idea, “once unthinkable,” was “gaining attention in European
policy circles: a European Union nuclear weapons program.”[1]
The arsenal in the state of France would be “repurposed”—which is to say, federalized in American terms—to protect
the European Union rather than merely one of its states. The command of the
weapons, as well as the funding plan and defense doctrine, would be federal.
Even though the question of whether the E.U. could continue to count of
American protection—there being dozens of American nuclear weapons in the E.U.—was
at the time most tantalizing, I submit that the matter of federalism in the
case of the E.U. is salient too.
The
complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires.
[1]
Max Fisher, “Fearing
U.S. Withdrawal, Europe Considers Its Own Nuclear Deterrent,” The New York Times, March 6, 2017.
