Sweden has quietly stepped into one of Europe’s most sensitive debates. Prime minister Ulf Kristersson has confirmed that Sweden is in early talks with France and the United Kingdom about possible nuclear weapons cooperation, a move that would have sounded unthinkable in Stockholm not long ago.
The conversations are still vague, with no formal proposals on the table. Kristersson told Sweden’s public broadcaster SVT that France “occasionally raises” the idea of discussing nuclear capabilities with other European countries and that Sweden, as a new member of NATO, now joins all of those discussions.
He stressed that Stockholm sees no need to host nuclear weapons in peacetime and described the talks as exploratory rather than a plan to turn Swedish jets into nuclear delivery platforms.
So why open this door now?
A nuclear debate shaped in Washington and over Greenland
The timing is not accidental. Kristersson spoke just after the US Department of War released the unclassified summary of its new National Defense Strategy, which signals that Europe is expected to handle most of its own conventional defense while Washington focuses first on the Western Hemisphere and China.
One European defense official told analysts the document is “a very clear call for Europe to be responsible for its own defense,” including against Russia.
At the same time, President Donald Trump has shaken allies with blunt comments about his own power and about Greenland. In a New York Times interview he said his only real limit was “my own morality. My own mind.
It is the only thing that can stop me,” and added “I don’t need international law.” In a separate exchange he suggested “it may be a choice” between keeping NATO intact and obtaining control over Greenland, a Danish territory at the heart of today’s Arctic crisis.
For European leaders who already worry about energy costs and inflation, hearing that Washington may one day choose Greenland over the alliance has concentrated minds.
From French umbrella to a Franco-British core
Paris had already started to move. In 2025 President Emmanuel Macron called for a “strategic dialogue” on extending French nuclear protection to European partners, an idea EU leaders received with cautious interest.
Later that year France and the UK signed the Northwood Declaration, a joint statement that deepens cooperation between their independent nuclear forces and creates a new UK-France Nuclear Steering Group.
Together, France and Britain field roughly 290 and around 200 nuclear warheads respectively, while Russia is estimated to have more than 5,000 in its stockpile. Those numbers underline why any “European bomb” would likely build on Franco-British arsenals rather than start from scratch in a new country.
Analysts say the most realistic form of cooperation for Sweden would look less like US-style nuclear sharing and more like hosting French Rafale aircraft or submarines on a rotational basis under French command, which would still send a powerful signal to Moscow without breaking non-proliferation rules.
Sweden’s old taboo and a new Nordic role
This is a dramatic turn for a country that once ran a secret nuclear weapons program, then shut it down in the early 1970s after signing the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty in 1968. For decades Sweden defined itself as a champion of disarmament rather than deterrence.
That political reflex is now under pressure. In January, the influential daily Dagens Nyheter ran an editorial titled “No one wants to discuss Swedish nuclear weapons, but we must”, arguing that Europe can no longer avoid a serious debate about non-US nuclear options and even floating a joint Nordic deterrent, possibly with Germany.
For many Swedes, who are more used to worrying about the electric bill or summer wildfires than fallout shelters, the thought of any nuclear role still feels deeply uncomfortable. Yet the combination of Russian aggression, a volatile White House and a US strategy that openly expects Europe to defend itself is nudging that conversation into the mainstream.
What happens next?
Nothing in Kristersson’s comments means Sweden is about to build its own bomb. The talks he describes are early and reversible. But they show that nuclear deterrence is no longer a distant abstraction discussed only in Paris, London or Washington. It is becoming part of everyday security planning for northern Europe.
Whether this leads to a tighter Franco-British “European umbrella,” a stronger conventional build up without new nuclear arrangements, or a messy debate that spurs wider proliferation will depend on choices made in the next few years, not the next few decades.
For now, even the fact that Sweden is willing to talk about the bomb places it inside a broader European conversation that had long seemed reserved for bigger powers and for bleaker predictions of inevitable war.
The official statement was published by the U.S. Department of Defense.
