This chapter explores how technocratic elites in the five NATO host nations respond to the multiple pressures surrounding nuclear sharing. Based on original interview data, it analyses how these elites perceive the purpose of hosting nuclear weapons, assess the legitimacy of various domestic and international audiences, and navigate interactions with diverse stakeholders. The chapter also examines national strategic documents and official government communications directed at the public, parliament, and civil society regarding nuclear sharing. Additionally, it investigates how elites articulate and defend nuclear sharing in international settings, particularly in the context of an increasingly adversarial global environment.

The introduction opens the book, it offers its argument in short, situates the work in the existing scholarship, and offers a chapter-by-chapter overview of the book.

This chapter examines the perspectives of the allies of the NATO host nations, focusing on the broader alliance, the United States as the principal patron, and other European member states. Drawing on strategic documents and official statements, the chapter analyses how these allies discuss nuclear sharing and extended deterrence. It explores the language, framing, and strategic justifications used to support the policy, offering insight into how external stakeholders influence and legitimise nuclear sharing within the alliance framework.

This chapter introduces the theoretical framework of the book. It begins by engaging with long-standing critiques of nuclear sharing as an undemocratic practice, highlighting how such critiques have evolved over time. The chapter then draws on Peter Mair’s conceptual distinction between responsiveness and responsibility as dual modes of democratic control. Nuclear sharing is presented as a paradigmatic technocratic policy, wherein its perceived democratic deficit is not a flaw but a defining feature. Building on this, the chapter develops the theory of technocratic responsiveness, illustrating how technocrats are influenced by a range of societal stakeholders – including voters, political parties, and civil society actors – and how they remain accountable not only to domestic publics but also to foreign allies within the nuclear-sharing framework.

This chapter examines public attitudes towards nuclear sharing in Europe, drawing on new survey data from the five NATO host nations. Existing scholarship shows that the European publics have long opposed nuclear sharing, consistently favouring nuclear disarmament. While minor variations in survey timing and wording may account for occasional deviations, a clear pattern of opposition emerges across all host countries. This trend has shifted somewhat following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as public support for nuclear sharing has increased. Although there is still little support for expanding the nuclear sharing mission, its current form has been garnering solid backing. This chapter maps the public opinion on nuclear sharing, nuclear use, and disarmament, and analyses the factors that shape these attitudes. It also finds relatively small differences in opinion across the five host nations.

This chapter concludes the book by summarising and answering its central research question. In addition to synthesising the main findings, it advances three further arguments. First, it examines the evolving debates following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and in the early weeks of Trump’s second administration, including proposals to expand nuclear sharing or complement it with additional nuclear capabilities in Europe, and considers how such proposals are likely to be received in the host nations. Second, it analyses the intensifying international backlash against nuclear sharing and explores how this opposition may continue to evolve. Finally, the chapter offers recommendations for how technocrats can enhance their responsiveness and how the public legitimacy of nuclear sharing might be strengthened moving forward.

This chapter examines the positions of European political parties on nuclear sharing across the five NATO host nations. It begins by outlining the theoretical and conceptual foundations for why political parties are important actors in shaping foreign and security policy. The chapter then compares the stances of far-left, centre-left, centre-right, and far-right parties using party manifesto data from the Comparative Manifesto Project’s Manifesto Corpus. In the second half, it analyses parliamentary activity in four of the five countries (excluding Turkey, where no such activity exists), focusing on voting patterns related to motions critical of nuclear sharing. This analysis draws on novel data covering all parliamentary votes on nuclear weapons in the selected countries.

In the first years of the twenty-first century, Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush sought to develop a strategic and economic partnership. Yet by 2007 US–Russian relations were marked by friction, and after 2012 they deteriorated into bitter enmity. This chapter argues that blaming the degeneration of relations on the KGB background, paranoia, and imperial ambitions of Putin is too simple and one-sided. It shows that the United States also spurred the decline by supporting “color revolutions” in countries around Russia, promoting NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, pushing regime change in countries such as Syria, Libya, and Venezuela, and placing missile defense systems in Eastern Europe. Although Russia and the United States cooperated on a strategic arms reduction treaty, Russian entry into the World Trade Organization, and restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program, conflict increasingly overshadowed such collaboration. That outcome was not inevitable. Instead, unwise policy choices led to clashes, dishonest statements eroded trust, needlessly provocative rhetoric exacerbated tensions, and media sensationalism inflamed antipathies between Americans and Russians.

This chapter covers the Democrat Party’s first term in office (1950–54), focusing on two aspects of this period: first, its leaders’ consolidation of power; second, the ways in which their economic policies of lower taxes, expanded credit, and increased investment depended on close relations with the United States. To secure economic and military aid, Democrat Party leaders sent soldiers to fight in the Korean War and continuously reminded US officials of Turkey’s strategic value. Drawing on diplomatic archives from the United States, Britain, and Turkey, this chapter reveals the dynamics of these negotiations. Moreover, the chapter shows how control of economic policymaking was a crucial arena of intraparty power struggles, both among the top leadership and at the provincial level. Again, looking at examples from Balıkesir and Malatya, we see how tensions increased between the parties during the early 1950s. We also see how the DP’s control of government allowed it to steer projects to provinces it controlled and penalize provinces that rejected it.

This chapter focuses on the Democrat Party’s final years in power (1958–60), which followed a debt restructuring agreement with creditors. During these years, Democrat Party leaders attempted to implement unpopular economic policies while still holding on to power. Their main tactic was to create the “Homeland Front,” a mass political organization. Though many people joined willingly, the Democrat-led government relied on high-pressure tactics and propaganda to ensure participation. It also increased pressure on its opposition through both legislation and extralegal actions such as mobilizing mobs to attack opposition leaders. These methods were, I argue, part of a more general shift toward illiberal, less democratic norms of governance among American Cold War allies in the late 1950s. By 1960, however, the Democrat Party’s authoritarian actions had alienated important domestic groups, including academics, bureaucrats, and military officers, which led to its removal from power. Rather than explaining the origins of the May 1960 coup, this chapter reveals how hollowed out the democratic political order had become by the time military officers finally launched their operation.

“Alignment” is an umbrella term to describe a relationship between two or more states that involves mutual expectations of some degree of policy coordination on security issues under certain conditions in the future. The types of alignment explored in this chapter are alliances, thin and thick security institutions, coalitions, and strategic partnerships. The distinguishing features of these alignments are their differing levels of formality and the reason for their creation, or their objectives. Strategic alignments remain one of the dominant means that sovereign states possess to cooperate and coordinate their actions around common threats and political interests. States are either pulled into distrustful relations through security dilemmas or they are obliged to work together to solve common problems. Alliances, security institutions, coalitions, and strategic partnerships offer a variety of ways that states may seek to address security issues, threats, or challenges to their territories or interests.