“Everything should be on the table in this situation,” proclaimed the leader of the Swedish Democrats, a member of the nation’s governing coalition. Similar views are being aired in the press. “The umbrella is gone,” writes one of Sweden’s largest daily newspapers, referring to the American nuclear deterrent, urging Stockholm to consider acquiring nuclear weapons itself.

This might seem surprising, not least given the long-standing Nordic reputation for gentle diplomacy. In truth, though, Sweden is an ideal candidate for joining the nuclear club, quite aside from the nuclear-armed opponent on its doorstep. Boasting one of the most sophisticated arms industries in Europe, a robust civilian nuclear power sector, and indeed an abortive scheme to build a bomb during the Cold War, Sweden has everything it needs to go nuclear — even though Nordic proliferation could be the death knell for the whole Nato alliance.

If America’s commitment to Europe no longer seems credible, the Nordics also can’t rely on partners closer to home. Certainly, the Nato goal of raising allied defense spending to 5% of GDP seems distant, while the continent’s stagnant economies, burdened by ballooning welfare schemes, show little appetite for higher defense budgets. Spain is emblematic of this attitude, with Madrid spending just 1.28% of GDP on its military. Calls to raise this level to 5% were dismissed by Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s Prime Minister, as “disrespectful”, and who instead pledged not to cut a single cent from welfare spending. Italy is in a similar position, while even France, the strongest proponent of European strategic autonomy, is unable to mend its bloated pension system.

In other words, the Nordic countries find themselves alone, menaced by a threat they view as existential. For most other European countries — with the exception of Poland and the Baltics — the Russian danger feels remote. Few expect Putin’s tanks to roll into Berlin or Rome. The Nordic countries, on the other hand, see Russia as a clear and present danger, and for good reason. Swedish intelligence has long warned of Moscow targeting Swedish territorial integrity. Norway reports that Russian aircraft have violated its airspace for the first time in a decade, that preparations for sabotaging its water system could be underway, and that Russian GPS-jamming is making an airspace incident increasingly likely. Just two weeks ago, Finland caught a ship suspected of sabotaging undersea cables in the Baltic. The pressure, in short, is rising, pushing the Nordics to consider more drastic security options.

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And internally, too, Sweden has reasons to go nuclear. The expertise accumulated in its civilian nuclear sector — control over the fuel cycle, reactor physics, supply chains — provides a solid foundation for military development. Another advantage is Sweden’s world-class manufacturing base. Unlike much of Europe, it never embraced the idea of a post-industrial society, and its defense sector is among the most modern and well-rounded around, producing everything from submarines to fighter jets. Saab has extensive experience with aviation, missile systems, and command and control; BAE Systems Bofors provides deep expertise with warheads, and explosives.

This engineering know-how dovetails with Sweden’s broader financial health. Of course, a military nuclear program is an expensive undertaking. Yet bucking the EU’s trend, Sweden has already increased its defense budget by 28% since 2023, with plenty of space for more. That makes Stockholm, alongside the other Nordics, financial outliers. They’re not gerontocracies laden with debt. Their pension systems, unlike those crushing Southern Europe and France, were prudently designed to adjust to changing demographic and economic conditions. Just as important, their fiscal health is stable. Financing a nuclear project would not be an insurmountable financial burden.

These economic strengths are also echoed elsewhere. In recent months, after all, Sweden has become something of a monetary safe haven, with a convenience yield lower than Switzerland’s. In layman’s terms, markets are eager to buy Swedish government bonds even at very low yields, effectively paying a premium to park capital in this famously stable jurisdiction. Borrowing to finance a nuclear program would therefore not be a problem for Sweden, especially if it shared the burden with the other Nordics.

As one Norwegian researcher bluntly declares, now that the US has lost the will to defend Europe, the only solution is a northern alliance equipped with a nuclear deterrent. Former Danish defense minister Jeppe Kofod has also proposed a Nordic defense union with the Bomb at its core. Commentators in the Swedish press are themselves discussing the idea, though whether Scandinavian jealousies can be tempered to create a joint nuclear umbrella remains an open question.

Yet perhaps the greatest challenge to acquiring the Bomb would be psychological. Sweden’s national identity is closely tied to pacifism, and Stockholm has long been an outspoken supporter of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). One could argue, however, that trading ideological commitments for national survival is not an unreasonable price to pay. Nuclear states do not fight with each other. As the deterrence theorist Thomas Schelling famously put it, the threat of the Bomb leaves something to chance, making one nuclear power extremely reluctant to roll the dice against another nuclear state.

All the same, the pursuit of a nuclear deterrent would be a radical development. The theorist of nuclear proliferation Jacques Hymans argues that it was not the NPT that prevented nuclearization around the world — but rather the absence of determined elites. Go-getting leaders like Charles de Gaulle or David Ben-Gurion are scarce. Still, existential threats, of the sort that Israel once faced, are precisely what inspire leaders to eschew dependence on a distant ally.

Sweden has an instructive record of policy independence. During the pandemic, for instance, it diverged from the Western consensus by rejecting lockdowns. In the Cold War, security concerns led Stockholm to explore the development of nuclear weapons. From 1947 onwards, the country’s ministry of defense saw the nuclear option as the most reliable way to stave off the Soviet threat. A decade later, the push for a Swedish deterrent accelerated as the military pressed for its development — most notably Supreme Commander Nils Swedlund, who despised political bargaining and viewed the issue as key to Swedish security.

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As Tony Jonter explains in his book on Sweden’s earlier effort to build the Bomb, political elites ultimately halted the project, which was opposed by the peace movement, feminists, and parts of the military. Yet as Jonter discovered later, it’s unclear whether the program was truly cancelled — or instead driven underground. Certainly, parts of the military remained skeptical about the effectiveness of the NPT and regarded nuclear weapons as a necessary backup. These rumors persisted for years. As late as 1994, The Washington Post noted that Sweden had preserved structures and components essential for producing nuclear weapons.

One can speculate whether a Nordic nuclear umbrella — perhaps also including Germany — is even viable. A similar structure has never been tried in the past, and the path of overt proliferation is probably a non-starter. Building a bomb in full view of the world would almost certainly provoke a military response from Moscow.

Yet as Sweden’s Cold War experience suggests, another scenario could involve following the Israeli model of nuclear opacity: developing a deterrent in secret while signaling its existence ambiguously once acquired, in a way that shapes adversaries’ behavior. Even here, of course, Israel could not have secured its own bomb without the tacit consent of the Nixon administration, and it remains an open question whether a Trump administration would follow a similar path here. “Immediately after the Cold War, one of the biggest instincts of the United States was to stop smaller countries from getting nuclear weapons, and that interest is still there,” says Sumantra Maitra, a consultant and expert on international relations. “I don’t think the Americans would be very happy to have Swedes with their fingers on the nuclear button, just like we didn’t want post-Soviet countries to have nuclear weapons.”

A third option, then, would be to imitate Japan. Over the years, Tokyo, through both official and unofficial channels, has made clear that it retains the technical capability to build a bomb, and the credible threat of nuclearization has been sufficient to extract firm security commitments from the United States. Latent capability, a so-called “technical deterrent”, could persuade Washington to provide the kinds of guarantees it now seems reluctant to offer.

De Gaulle once remarked that nuclear weapons make alliances obsolete. This is not quite true, as the Japanese example shows. Yet the Nordic pursuit of the Bomb would unequivocally mean one thing: Nato is just a façade, obscuring a reality of sovereign states with varying interests, defense constraints, and threat perceptions. Whatever happens next, anyway, the frantic fluidity of Northern Europe’s security environment means that the time to choose is now — if the choice hasn’t already been made. The rising threat level, coupled with the Nordic countries’ penchant for contrarian decision-making, suggests they are ready to follow in Japan’s footsteps. Either way, Europe’s future will increasingly be decided in its north, dog sleds or not.

This is a defining moment for President Trump and his legacy. He has to decide if he’s prepared to allow Washington to be dragged into yet another unwanted war in the Middle East.

The Israeli operation, codenamed “Rising Lion,” comes fewer than 48 hours before Iranian and US negotiators led by special envoy Steve Witkoff were set to meet for a sixth round of nuclear talks. Moreover, Jerusalem’s action follows repeated statements from Trump, both public and (reportedly) in private conversations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which the President warned against an Israeli intervention that might “blow up” his deal.

Now, with America’s chief regional ally and client deliberately undermining US-led diplomacy and all but coercing Washington into war, American policy in the Middle East is in a fragile state. For Trump, who a decade ago took control of the GOP by opposing America’s “forever wars” in the Middle East, all this must be exasperating.

It’s notable that the Israeli attack comes on the heels of Netanyahu narrowly surviving a vote to dissolve the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. Netanyahu’s efforts to include ultra-Orthodox Israelis in the military draft had alienated the conservative religious wing of his governing coalition, forcing the prime minister to scramble to find a compromise before Thursday morning’s vote. While the agreement is unlikely to solve Netanyahu’s political problems, it did buy him time — and fewer than 24 hours later, he launched an aggressive war on Iran.

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The stated purpose behind Israel’s Friday morning attack is to destroy the Iranian nuclear program, with Israel Defense Forces Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin claiming that “we have no choice” and that Iran’s achieving nuclear capabilities is a danger “to the entire world.” But that clearly hasn’t been Washington’s view of the matter, since successive US administrations of both parties have sought to resolve the dispute diplomatically.

Following the International Atomic Energy Agency’s vote to censure Iran for failing to comply with nonproliferation standards, Trump restated his commitment to a diplomatic solution: “Look, it’s very simple, not complicated,” the president said. “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Other than that, I want them to be successful. I want them to be tremendous. We’ll help them be successful. We’ll trade with them. We’ll do whatever is necessary.” Mere hours before the attack, Trump stated: “I want to have an agreement with Iran. We’re fairly close to an agreement.”

Israel’s unilateral and aggressive actions have not only undermined American diplomacy, but have now directly put American lives at risk. There are approximately 40,000 US personnel based in the Persian Gulf region. Iran will retaliate against the Jewish state — that is not in question. The danger is that when the Iranians do retaliate, they will probably, inadvertently or not, hit American troops or other direct US interests, which would trigger a response from Washington.

Secretary of State and acting National Security Adviser Marco Rubio seems savvy to this danger, stating clearly that the United States is “not involved in strikes against Iran, and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region.” Rubio warned: “Iran should not target US interests or personnel.” Likewise, Trump noted before the attack was launched that the State Department had begun evacuations of its staff from Baghdad, while the US military was evacuating nonessential personnel from bases in the Middle East.

While American leaders seem to understand how this conflict could harm American lives and interests in the region, they haven’t yet commented on how such harm appears to be what Netanyahu is counting on. It is a brazen move of a kind that GOP realists of an earlier age — the likes of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and advisers like James Baker and Brent Scowcroft — would never tolerate. An alliance partner of the United States has launched a unilateral attack on another state, apparently with the aim of scuttling diplomatic negotiations.

Not only has Israel sabotaged US efforts at diplomacy, but these actions are endangering American lives in the hopes that the US will be forced to retaliate against Iran. That is, Netanyahu is hoping that an escalation will drag America into the fray to force America into a regional conflagration just when a bipartisan consensus has emerged in favor of redeployment away from the Middle East toward more strategically pertinent areas like the Pacific.

In response, American leaders need to take control of the situation as quickly as possible, and to do so they must condemn Israel’s aggression, thus putting distance between Washington and what took place on Friday.

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Allowing Israel to continue down this path without clear rebuke not only risks another forever war in the Middle East with an unthinkable cost in human life. It will, additionally, turn America into a laughing stock on the international stage. While some internet commentators have hypothesized that the United States covertly supports this attack, that would be a terrible strategic miscalculation: either Netanyahu has made America look the fool and is trying to strong-arm Trump into supporting a war that is against America’s interests, or Trump has supported Netanyahu’s actions for the same reputational cost.

Without condemning Israel’s actions, Trump is sending a clear message: he doesn’t make American policy, Benjamin Netanyahu does.

While the fog of war is as bedeviling as ever, the political options facing the United States are fairly clear: support for Netanyahu, whether actively or passively, will signal that the American government is weak, lacks autonomy, and is servile to the interests of a foreign government, even when that government intentionally endangers American lives and interests.

Alternatively, the United States can say “no more” to Israelis — they created this mess, and the consequences are theirs alone to deal with. This would not only avoid another pointless conflict in the Middle East and spare countless lives, but would also be a tremendous win for Donald Trump.

Joe Biden allowed Netanyahu to derail his presidency by going along with ever bloodier escalation in Gaza. Trump would be wise to avoid the same fate. If he truly wants to be the America First president, then Trump must remind Israel, once and for all, which is the client state — and which the patron.