In Foreign Policy, Thorsten Benner explains incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s plan to cover his country in its own nuclear umbrella as the United States leaves the business of protecting Europeans. Benner writes:

Scholz’s likely successor, Merz, strikes a very different tone. Before official results had been announced on the night of the Feb. 23 election, he stated: “My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.” Merz also said that it was unclear whether “we will still be talking about NATO in its current form” by the time of the bloc’s planned summit in June, “or whether we will have to establish an independent European defense capability much more quickly.”

Merz is convinced that this needs to include a Plan B for the possible end of the U.S. nuclear umbrella. The chancellor-in-waiting has proposed discussions with France and the U.K. on whether the two are willing to engage in a nuclear-sharing arrangement with Germany.

That is a sea change in the German debate. Former Chancellors Angela Merkel and Scholz had consistently ignored French President Emmanuel Macron’s offers to engage in a strategic dialogue on nuclear deterrence in Europe. In a televised address on March 5, Macron responded positively to what he referred to as Merz’s “historic call.” The French president said that he had decided “to open the strategic debate on the protection of our allies on the European continent by our [nuclear] deterrent.”

The Merz-Macron alignment provides a solid political base for discussions on Europeanizing nuclear sharing further. Of course, there are many obstacles, risks, and unanswered questions, as critics of these proposals in the German debate have been quick to point out.

Read more here.