Hawks in the making? European public views on nuclear weapons post‐Ukraine
| Published date | 01 May 2023 |
| Author | Michal Onderco,Michal Smetana,Tom W. Etienne |
| Date | 01 May 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.13179 |
Global Policy. 202 3;1 4:30 5– 317.
|
305
wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/gpol
1 | RUSSIAN INVASION OF
UKRAINE AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS
The Russian attack on Ukraine of Februar y 2022 shook
up European security. It was the definitive end to the
geopolitical ‘tim e- out’ which Europe had been taking
since the end of the Cold War. Its impact on defence
policy was swift and strong. European countries qui ckly
increased their military expenditure, agreed to new
weapons acquisition programmes and st arted to think
about how to address this new reality. The German term
Zeitenwende captures this defining moment well, with
its (loose) translation as ‘a turning point of the times’.
A prominent element of the conflict has been Rus sia's
nuclear rhetoric, which include d repeated veiled threats
of the use of nuclear weapons in case of Western in-
tervention (Arndt & Horovitz, 2022). The Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists keeps a regularly updated time -
line with expert comments on the likelihoo d of nuclear
weapons use.1 For many Europeans, the current war
is the first time in their adult lives that the prospect of
nuclear war looms as a real threat. The question arises:
How did the Russian attack on Ukraine c hange how
Europeans think about nuclear weapons?
This question carries an obvious academ ic and pol-
icy relevance. Academically, it speaks to the debates
about the ‘stickiness’ of the nuclear t aboo and how
major historical events can affect global norm s. From
the policy perspectives, the question matters because
it addresses a major point of contention in the transat-
lantic security debate.
While France and the United Kingdom possess
their own, independent, nuclear deterrent, for most
European countries, the nuclear deterrent is provided
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Hawks in the making? European public views on nuclear
weapons post- Ukraine
MichalOnderco1,2 | MichalSmetana2 | Tom W.Etienne3,4
Received: 24 Septem ber 2022
|
Revised: 4 Januar y 2023
|
Accepted: 5 Janu ary 2023
DO I: 10 .1111/17 58- 589 9.13 179
This is an open ac cess article under t he terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which perm its use and distributi on in
any medium, provi ded the original work is p roperly cited, the use i s non-commercial a nd no modifications o r adaptations are made.
© 2023 The Authors . Global Policy published by Durham Universi ty and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
1Department of Public Administration and
Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdam,
Rotterdam, Netherlands
2Faculty of Soci al Sciences, Charle s
University, Prague, C zech Republic
3Kieskompas – Election Compass,
Amsterdam, Netherlands
4Department o f Political Science &
Annenberg School for Communication,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, USA
Correspondence
Michal Onder co, Department of Publi c
Administration & Sociology, Erasmus
University Rotterdam, Burgemeester
Oudlaan, 50 Rot terdam 3000DR,
Netherlands.
Email: onderco@essb.eur.nl
Funding information
Charles Univer sity, Prague, Czechia,
Grant/Award Number: PRIMUS/22/
HUM/005 and UNCE/HUM/028; Charles
University
Abstract
In the past, the European public has not been enthusiast ic about nuclear deter-
rence and the stationing of US American nuc lear weapons in Europe. Has the
Russian invasion of Ukraine changed that aversion? We conducted a unique
study, surveying the same population of respondents at two points i n time— i n
September 2020 and in June 2022. We find that European respondents be came
much more hawkish after the invasion: nuclear deterrence was viewed more
favourably, the willingness to use nuclear weapo ns increased, and support for
the withdrawal of nuclear weapons dropped sign ificantly. The paper draws a
number of policy implications from these r esults.
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