Thanks to Putin, the U.S. will again place long-range missiles in Germany

During the NATO summit, the American and German governments issued a brief statement that, beginning in 2026, the U.S. “will begin episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of its Multi-Domain Task Force in Germany…When fully developed, these conventional long-range fires units will…have significantly longer range than current land-based fires in Europe.”

The announcement prompted an angry Russian response, with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov assailing the plan as “deplorable…as it will have destructive consequences for regional security and strategic stability.” Ryabkov added that Russia had expected the announcement and that “the competent Russian agencies started their work on developing compensatory countermeasures well in advance and continue this work systematically.”  

Russian military analysts have noted that it would be exceedingly difficult to distinguish between a conventionally armed missile and one carrying a nuclear warhead. The clear implication is that Russia might respond by deploying longer-range nuclear systems targeting Germany in particular. It is an implication made all the more credible given Vladimir’s Putin’s ongoing threats to resort to nuclear weapons if the West continues to supply increasingly more capable weapons systems to Ukraine.

It is noteworthy that the new agreement did not involve other European allies. This stands in contrast to NATO’s controversial decision in 1979 to deploy ground-launched cruise missiles and Pershing ballistic missiles in Western Europe. Although all the NATO ministers agreed to the deployment plan — while also announcing a second “track” to reduce intermediate-range nuclear missile force levels — German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt conditioned acceptance of these systems on German soil only if two other European states followed suit. But only the British quickly agreed to base them on their territory.

At the same time, the immediate reaction on the part of many in Europe was bitter opposition to the NATO plan. The next two years after NATO’s announcement witnessed massive demonstrations in Britain as well as on the continent against the nuclear deployments.

Indeed, as Italian Prime Minister Giovanni Spadolini would later point out to me and others after he left public life, he deliberately held off announcing that Italy would be the second NATO ally to accept the missiles, and deploy them at Sicily’s Comiso air base, until a Friday afternoon in August. Of course, at that time most Italians were on vacation and not following the news, so there were no major demonstrations to upset the government’s plans.

There have been no rallies against the current U.S.-German agreement, but that does not mean there isn’t internal German opposition to the plan. Like Helmut Schmidt, German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz leads the Social Democratic Party. But unlike his predecessor, he does not necessarily have the same degree of support that Schmidt was able to obtain. Moreover, both the far-right Alternative for Deutschland and Scholtz’s junior coalition partner, the Green Party, are unhappy with the agreement and the way it was reached with almost no publicity.

Nevertheless, the Greens are no more likely to bring down the government over this issue than they have over their frustration with what they perceive as the government’s insufficient climate change policies. While the AfD will no doubt exploit the new agreement as an issue in its campaign during Germany’s upcoming local elections, it will not affect the government’s decision.

At the end of the day, the German decision to welcome a new set of American longer-range missiles is yet another instance of NATO’s powerful reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Putin’s war has unified NATO in a manner not seen since the height of the Cold War.

It has led directly to the entry of historically nonaligned Sweden and Finland into NATO. It has energized NATO’s European members not only to achieve the alliance’s common goal of spending two percent of GDP on defense, but, for many of its members, to push beyond that target.

It has led NATO to characterize the process of granting Ukraine’s membership in the alliance as “irreversible.” It has resulted in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky successfully getting alliance commitments to deliver Patriot missiles and other air defense systems to his forces. And it has also led to his winning support from an increasing number of NATO members to heed his call, made again this week in his remarks at the Ronald Reagan Institute, to drop all restrictions on the use of their systems against targets inside Russia.

All of these developments underline the disastrous consequences of Putin’s historic strategic blunder. The price Russians will pay for that blunder will only continue to grow as the war drags on.

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.