During the recent aborted coup in Turkey, the Incirlik air base near the Syrian border was surrounded and all flights in and out were cancelled. The U.S. is currently using Incirlik as a base for bombing operations against ISIS. The U.S. has fifty B61 nuclear gravity bombs stored at the base. The Turkish base commander was arrested as part of the aftermath of the coup attempt. The events at the Incerlik air base raise the question of whether the U.S. would be able to maintain control of U.S. nuclear weapons at the base in the event of widespread civil disorder in Turkey. The fact President Erdogan of Turkey visited Russian President Putin in St. Petersburg shortly after the coup to rebuild relations also has U.S. military planners worried.
EurActiv, a European online news site based in Brussels, has just reported that the U.S. is moving twenty of the B61 nuclear bombs from Incirlik in Turkey to the Desevelu air base in Romania. Russia is already upset about the U.S. anti-missile system that was turned on in May in Romania. The U.S. says that the system is meant to guard against missiles fired from Middle Eastern countries like Iran but Russia is concerned that it might be used against Russian missiles.
The movement of nuclear weapons from Turkey to Romania would be sure to anger the Russians even more. Romania recently denied the stories about the move and stated that there were no U.S. nuclear weapons in Romania and there would not be any U.S. nuclear weapons moved to Romania from Turkey. The Founding Act signed in 1997 between NATO and Russia specifically states that NATO members “have no intention, no plan and no reason to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of new members [such as Romania], nor any need to change any aspect of NATO's nuclear posture or nuclear policy - and do not foresee any future need to do so”.
The non-profit Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is saying that under the terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it would be illegal for the U.S. to move nuclear bombs to Romania. Article One of the treaty says that the movement of nuclear weapons to a non-nuclear state is prohibited. In addition, Article Two states that non-nuclear signatories of the treaty agree to never acquire nuclear weapons from a nuclear state. There are currently U.S. nuclear weapons in other non-nuclear NATO members so it is unclear why moving such weapons to Romania would be any different.
Since the annexation of the Crimea by Russia in 2014, the situation on the western Russian border has been deteriorating. In the Ukraine, the lull in the fighting with Russian back rebels has been disappearing and the fighting is intensifying. Russia is in the process of moving forty thousand troops to the border with Ukraine. Moving nuclear weapons to Romania which is a neighbor of Ukraine would probably not be a good idea given the current geopolitical climate in Eastern Europe.
