The alliance's nuclear policy has remained more or less the same under the current U.S. president, and no significant changes have occurred, Stokes told Monday's "Välisilm."

He sees no indications that the United States intends to abandon its nuclear deterrence commitment to NATO or that the U.S. nuclear deterrent has weakened.

"The United States maintains its nuclear weapons that are forward deployed here within Europe and then we have a way of sharing the responsibility for NATO's nuclear mission across different allies, and of course, within the nuclear planning group which is the body within NATO where they make all the decisions about nucleur deterance, we have 31 nations that participate, including Estonia, where we make consensus decisions about anything that relates to NATO nuclear detterence. So, even though it is fairly early on within the U.S. administration, the one thing that hasn't changed is that commitment from the United States," he said,

Media speculation that NATO countries may start to develop nuclear weapons is exaggerated, the official said, adding no country is seriously considering such actions.

"I personally don't think that that's a good idea," said Stokes. "It would be very costly, I don't think it's in the best interests of our security and, most importantly, I just don't think that it is necessary. The commitment from the United States, I still think, remains ironclad. We have the security guarantees from the United Kingdom with its nuclear deterrent, and then France's nuclear deterrent also contributes to the security of the alliance in a different way."

He said there is no need to reinvent the wheel because NATO already has a well-established nuclear deterrence program, and it works very well.

Even if other member states started to consider creating their own nuclear weapons, from the perspective of collective defense, it would not be a serious approach, Stokes said.

"What we do need to do is have an internal discussion within the alliance about how to continue to strengthen our overall deterrence defense posture and the key thing about that, I think, is that looking at where we need to be investing in conventional defense capabilities. Our overall deterrence posture has always been a mix of conventional capabilities and nuclear capabilities. We need to have an internal discussion about what that mix is," the policy chief said.

At the moment, allies are moving to strengthen their conventional capabilities by raising defense spending. Stokes said it is more important to find money for developing conventional forces, not nuclear weapons.

The official said France's offer to extend its nuclear umbrella over other countries in Europe was very welcome.

"It's additive to what we have within NATO, in terms of NATO's nuclear deterrence. It's additive to what the United States and the United Kingdom are also providing. And it's also additive to what we're doing with conventional defense capabilities," he said.

However, he does not believe that putting nuclear weapons on the eastern flank would improve their security. Stokes said NATO's nuclear weapons protect all countries equally, no matter their location.

The most important factor is that NATO continues to function successfully as a nuclear alliance, the policy chief said. This means ensuring there is political will and the correct equipment in place so that a missile carrying a nuclear warhead or a nuclear-armed aircraft can be launched at the right time

"I don't think we need to necessarily respond in a tit for tat fashion – if the Russians do this, then we need to do something in return. We're going to take into consideration all the different aspects of what is going on within the security environment," Stokes said.

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