Alternative defence: answer to NATO's Central Front problems?

Abstract

In the early 1980s, intense controversy over the deployment of new American intermediate-range nuclear missiles brought insistent questioning in Western Europe of the existing NATO defence posture and its dependence on nuclear weapons, along with a steady stream of proposals calling for its radical reorganization. These ideas have been most numerous in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), where the bulk of NATO ground forces face the main Warsaw Pact standing forces, and where opposition to missile deployment has been most intense. The resultant debate between the proponents of new approaches and the supporters of the current NATO force posture has had two main themes: the possibility of a defence based on a drastic cutback of NATO nuclear weapons, and discussion of the merits of static defence (based on high-technology microelectronics-sensors, and rocket-launchers using precision-guided munitions) versus mobile defence (based on tanks and other armoured platforms). In the context of a possible agreement on intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) between the United States and the Soviet Union, Western military experts and diplomats are anxiously looking for new ways to improve NATO conventional defences-and also for a productive negotiating position for the new NATO-Warsaw Pact 'Atlantic to the Urals' negotiations scheduled to open in the spring of 1988. Proponents of these new approaches claim to have answers to both needs. This article examines the contentions of those supporting the new proposals that their adoption would sharply reduce the dangers of the formidable force concentration in central Europe and, even if implemented unilaterally by NATO, would contribute to building down that confrontation. There is no widely accepted standard designation for these suggestions for reorienting NATO's defence posture. In the analysis that follows, they will be called proposals for alternative defence. But before turning to a detailed analysis of alternative defence proposals, it may be useful to place them in context against the overall setting of developments in NATO thought and criticisms of the NATO posture since the early 1980s.