alt Hacker NewsThe UK and France also have nukes. I'm not sure about the UK, but France at least would shield NATO and EU with the nuclear umbrella even if the US leaves NATO. Finland, Romania and Poland might want to ask France if it minds sharing.. ideally before the alliance gets so weak that Putin decides to test our resolve.
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IIRC the UK and France have enough nuclear weapons to decimate an industrialized economy. The UK also shares some of its nuclear weapons program with the United States through the servicing of its Vanguard class submarines at King's Bay, GA.
They do not have enough to create an exchange that could wipe out human society, which is the deterrent that the US brought to bear.
If you are Vladimir Putin, with enough infrastructure to possibly protect yourself and your ruling class from an attack of 120 warheads, but not 1700, your calculus for the use of nuclear weapons - particularly the tactical type, of which Russia has many - changes considerably if the people with 1700 warheads are no longer going to use them against you.
> France at least would shield NATO and EU with the nuclear umbrella even if the US leaves NATO
This is absolutely not the case. The French nuclear arsenal is controlled separately to the joint NATO command and the French have traditionally made it very clear it is for the protection of France, not NATO. Indeed France left NATO for years partly over this and only rejoined in 2009.
Macron has opened discussions about a "pan-Europe" nuclear shield, but be very clear: if Russia was to use battlefield nuclear weapons in say Poland, there is no expectation that France would respond. There is an expectation that NATO would respond (or there was last year.. who knows if NATO is reliable now?)