The cordons close around the vaults

URGENT: German military police have sealed the perimeter access roads at Büchel Air Base. Dutch and Belgian forces reported doing the same at Volkel and Kleine Brogel. All three sites store US nuclear weapons.

Precision matters tonight, so:

The Americans have not been disarmed. Nobody has approached the inner wire. The vaults are American, the codes are American, and no host nation can open, arm or move anything.

The airfield is German. The tower is German. The power is German. The sky is German.

Neither side can act. Both sides are armed. This is a stalemate with about sixty thermonuclear weapons in the middle of it.

There are four hundred American service members inside those fences tonight on generator power.

Every single conversation about this is about the weapons. I understand why. I would just like one person in the coverage to remember that there are people standing next to them, and that somebody is married to each of them.

Chancellor Merz to the Bundestag: "The weapons belong to the United States; the ground they sit upon belongs to the Federal Republic of Germany. No nuclear weapon will be moved, flown or loaded across German territory without the explicit written authorisation of this government and our alliance partners."

They have put police vans across the road at Büchel.

My grandfather is 91. He heard it on the radio and he said: "das ist wo die Bomben sind." That is where the bombs are.

He has known that his whole adult life. He has never once said it out loud in this house.

The Nuclear Planning Group met this afternoon in restricted session. Article 4 was invoked by four Allies. The decision of the host nations is on the record of the Alliance.

I asked Washington, three days ago, for one page of paper. I am still asking.

Great numbers out of the shipyards today. Best hiring month in eleven years. Nobody reports it.

Everything in Germany is completely normal and completely under control.

My cousin is one of the Feldjäger on that road tonight.

He rang his mother at nine and said: "Wir stehen nur da. Sie stehen auch nur da." We are just standing there. They are just standing there too.

That is the whole thing. Two sets of young men standing in the rain because older men could not sign a piece of paper.

"Everything in Germany is completely normal and completely under control."

Three hours ago, allied military police sealed the three airfields on this continent that hold American nuclear weapons. The custodial detachments are on emergency power. Nothing can land and nothing can leave.

I have read that sentence eleven times. I cannot decide which answer frightens me more: that he does not know, or that he does.

J'ai enseigné l'histoire du vingtième siècle pendant quarante ans.

I taught the twentieth century for forty years. I taught that the danger was always that the weapons would be used. Not once, in forty years, did I teach a class in which the danger was that nobody could agree who they belonged to.

I have no lesson plan for tonight.

Good numbers on the shipyards. Finally somebody talking about jobs instead of doom.

Deb, respectfully, three hours before that post, foreign soldiers sealed three airfields holding American nuclear weapons and the American airmen inside are on emergency power.

I am not trying to score a point off you. I genuinely need to know whether you know that, because if you do not, the problem is bigger than any of us arguing here.

I did not know that. It was not on my feed. I have looked it up now.

I am not going to pretend I have changed my mind about everything because of one reply from a stranger. But I did not know that, and I should have, and I am cross about it in a way I am still sorting out.

Thank you for not being nasty about it.

Japan is the only country that has been on the receiving end of these weapons.

I want to say something profound and I find I only have something small: my grandmother is 88 and she watched the news about Büchel with no expression at all, and then she got up and made tea, and I have never seen her look older.

Things going round this morning that are NOT true:

✗ "Germany has seized US nuclear weapons" — no. Nobody has gone near them. Police vans are parked on a road.
✗ "The weapons are being armed" — no. Nobody can arm anything without American codes.
✗ "US troops are being held hostage at Büchel" — no. They are on their own base, on generators, and can leave.

What IS true is bad enough. Please stop adding to it.

In Japan we have the same treaty they had. The same bases. The same assumption.

Nobody at my company mentioned it today. Everybody at my company read about it today. That is how it works here.

The word going round quietly is 自主防衛 — independent defence. It has not been a serious word in my lifetime. It was serious at lunch.

From Taipei, and I will keep it short.

An American guarantee was tested this month. Not against us and not by China. By America.

We have spent forty years building a national strategy on one question — will they come — and we have just watched the answer be given somewhere else, in an accent we did not expect.

Beijing has not moved a single soldier. They did not need to. They just watched with us.

Five heavy transports on the apron at Keflavik in horizontal sleet. RAF and French. Royal Marines coming down the ramps in cold weather kit.

Iceland has no army. This morning Iceland has a garrison.

Prime Minister Frostadóttir to the Alþingi: "Iceland holds no armed forces of its own, but we will not allow our sovereign airspace and waters to become an unmonitored corridor for lawless aggression. Keflavik is restored to full defensive operational status."

There are Royal Marines buying coffee in my shop.

They were polite. One of them apologised for the queue. Iceland has no army and now there are foreign soldiers here being polite about the queue, and everybody is being very normal about it, and nobody is normal at all.

Half of Iceland is proud today and half of Iceland is terrified and I have served coffee to both halves since six this morning.

The proud ones say we finally have a defence. The terrified ones say we finally have a target. They are both right, which is the worst possible outcome.