The locations of American nuclear weapons in Europe aren't so secret anymore.
A NATO-related document revealed U.S. nukes can be found in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.
The document, “A new era for nuclear deterrence? Modernization, arms control and allied nuclear forces,” was authored and originally published by Canadian Sen. Joseph Day for the NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s Defense and Security Committee. Day said that the disclosure of the locations was intentional.
"We intended to communicate to our audience, which is the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, to give them information with respect to the issue of nuclear deterrentsm," he told Canada's Global News.
To make matters worse, Belgian newspaper De Morgen published a section of the document earlier this week that pinpointed where the 150 nukes are.
“These bombs are stored at six US and European bases — Kleine Brogel in Belgium, Büchel in Germany, Aviano and Ghedi-Torre in Italy, Volkel in The Netherlands, and Incirlik in Turkey,” the document reads.
The fact that American nuclear weapons can be found in Europe isn’t a surprise Kington Reif, director for disarmament and threat-reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, told the Washington Post in an email.
“This has long been fairly open knowledge,” he wrote.
A final version of the report was released last week, without referencing exactly where the bombs can be found. Day told the Post the first version of the paper was a draft and that changes could be made to it until the NATO Parliamentary Assembly takes it up in November.
“All information used in this report is open-source material,” he wrote.
Numerous European news outlets said the report confirmed what had been a well-known secret while some politicians expressed their concern over the American nukes on their soil.
“Do we really want Donald Trump to use nuclear weapons from our territory at the push of a button?” asked Dutch parliament member Wouter De Vriendt in De Morgen.
The weapons were put in place in the 1960s to deter the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
“The military mission for which these weapons were originally intended — stopping a Soviet invasion of Western Europe because of inferior U.S. and NATO conventional forces — no longer exists,” Reif said.
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