Event Background

On the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington D.C., on July 20, 2024, US President Biden and German Chancellor Scholz announced a major bilateral agreement: “The United States will begin episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of its Multi-Domain Task Force in Germany in 2026, as part of planning for enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future.”

What is behind the introduction of US long-range conventional missiles in Germany? What role do such conventional strike weapons play in US war planning? What are the escalation risks of the planned deployment? And why are many Germans more than worried?

Three international experts will address these questions and more:

• Jürgen Scheffran, Professor (ret.) at Hamburg University, is a co-founder of Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons and has worked on arms race dynamics with a focus on ballistic and cruise missiles and missile defense systems since the 1980s.
• Dan Plesch, Professor of Diplomacy and Strategy at SOAS University of London, is the co-author with Manuel Galileo of the recent report “Masters of the Air: Strategic stability and conventional strike”.
• Regina Hagen, spokesperson of the German network “atomwaffenfrei.jetzt” (nuclear-weapons-free now) and a member of the Coordinating Committee of Abolition 2000, is co-founder of the new campaign “Friedensfähig statt erstschlagfähig” that, calls for an immediate halt of the planned deployment.

Date: 5 December, 2024
Time: 6 PM GMT / 1 PM ET
Location: Online/ Zoom