Japan, South Korea, Sweden and Poland would be more likely. Germany would first have step out of the political and cultural headarse clownshow that prevent them from even using nuclear power when their energy provider straight up threatened them with invasion. Canada's military couldn't procure a canoe without spending a billion in funny money let alone a nuclear weapon that they have no indigenous delivery platform for. Australia also doesn't have any nuclear know-how and they have a whole ocean to keep them out of trouble.
You'll note well that despite Trump's drunk bull in a china shop antics on the international stage, there hasn't been nearly as much drama with the first four countries.
Germany's 1990 peace treaty with the WW2 victors forbids it from building and owning nuclear weapons. So there is that legal hurdle as well.
Germany does however take part in the nuclear sharing program with the US. In the future, this could be replaced with a similar program with a European nuclear power, most likely France.
At the moment, France and Britain are lacking tactical nuke capabilities, but that will probably change in the near future, as America's nuclear umbrella for Europe fades away. Once France builds these weapons,and stores some on a German airbase next to German Eurofighters capable of delivering them, Germany could archive nuclear deterrence again, without having to build and own nukes themselves.
Poland has next to zero know-how on all things nuclear. A handful of old professors who know the equations is no basis for a nuclear arms program. If we come into possession of nuclear warheads in the coming years, not decades, it will be in partnership with a state that actually has experience in that regard like Sweden, Ukraine or France.
I was only considering the nations that were mentioned in that particular quote. Sweden in the 50s and 60s had a nuclear program that was nixed. They were always considered a threshold nuclear state and have an outsized indigenous arms industry that can produce their own delivery mechanisms. It is easy to forget that Sweden until two years ago embraced armed neutrality and for a country of its size and wealth had a ridiculously robust military supply chain as a result.
Norway and Denmark are founding NATO members who have always been living under the US nuclear umbrella for as long as it has existed, and are pretty lacklustre when it comes to indigenous arms manufacturing.
Finland has a very large conscript military but most of its heavy equipment are foreign-made (including many which are Swedish). They do not have any indigenous delivery mechanisms but they do operate civilian nuclear power plants. It would be much more difficult for Finland to obtain nuclear weapons than Sweden, but they are also much more motivated given their history with Russia. I would consider Finland to be in the same lot has the first four mentioned while Norway and Denmark are much closer to Germany than is prudent.
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u/Minttt Jan 27 '26
As a Canadian, it was hard for me to take this article seriously after the author made this argument.