AP Photo

At the peak of the Cold War, more than 7,000 and as many as 24 different types of tactical -- or nonstrategic -- nuclear weapons were deployed by the United States through the NATO framework in Europe. The role of the weapons was to buttress deterrence of a Soviet military strike by countering the perception that, after the Warsaw Pact, NATO conventional forces were inferior to Soviet conventional forces. Some of the US tactical nuclear weapons -- which were stationed in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Turkey, and the United Kingdom -- are still there.