Nuclear sharing
In case of war, the United States has told NATO allies the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) would no longer be controlling.
[3][4] Canada hosted weapons under the control of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), rather than NATO, until 1984, and Greece until 2001.
In peacetime, the nuclear weapons stored in non-nuclear countries are guarded by United States Air Force (USAF) personnel and previously, some nuclear artillery and missile systems were guarded by United States Army (USA) personnel; the Permissive Action Link codes required for arming them remain under American control.
The weapons are under custody and control of USAF Munitions Support Squadrons co-located on NATO main operating bases who work together with the host nation forces.
[20][21] On 10 June 2013, former Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers confirmed the existence of 22 shared nuclear bombs at Volkel Air Base.
[22] This was inadvertently confirmed again in June 2019 when a public draft report to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly was discovered to reference the existence of US nuclear weapons at Volkel, as well as locations in Belgium, Italy, Germany, and Turkey.
[24][25][26][27][28][29][30] The presence of US nuclear weapons in Turkey gained increased public attention in October 2019 with the deterioration of relations between the two nations after the Turkish military incursion into Syria.
[36] In June 2023, then-prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki declared Poland's interest in hosting nuclear weapons under the policy, citing the reported deployment of Russian nuclear weapons to its Kaliningrad region and Belarus, while National Security Bureau head Jacek Siewiera said the country was interested in certifying its upcoming F-35A fleet as being capable of delivering B61 bombs.
[37] In April 2024, president Duda said that Poland was "ready" to host nuclear weapons and had been discussing the matter with the United States government for "some time".
"[39] In May, foreign minister Radosław Sikorski accused president Duda of failing to consult with him on this and other major foreign policy announcements and said that he had "asked the president privately and publicly not to discuss such delicate and secret matters in public, because it [did] not help Poland"; he also said that the previous Polish government had been told that the idea of Poland being involved with nuclear sharing was "not on the table".
[40] On 27 February 2022, shortly after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Belarusians voted in a referendum to repeal the post-Soviet Constitutional prohibition on basing of nuclear weapons in Belarus.
[48][49] In November 2013, a variety of sources told BBC Newsnight that Saudi Arabia was able to obtain nuclear weapons from Pakistan at will.
"[51] According to the US based think-tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the BBC report on possible nuclear sharing between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia is partially incorrect.
However, a nuclear sharing arrangement that may have had some logic in the pre-NPT and cold war world is now a source of weakening for the NPT, as it offers a rationale to other states to pursue a similar programme.
NATO's nuclear sharing programme could now be used as an excuse by China, Pakistan or any other nuclear-armed nation to establish a similar arrangement.
These agreements were disclosed to some of the states, including the Soviet Union, negotiating the treaty along with the NATO arguments for not treating them as proliferation.
