Abstract
The view, long and widely held, that NATO conventional military forces are inferior to Warsaw Pact forces is one of the most important factors shaping post-war history. It influenced the size and nature of the American military commitment to Europe. It is at the heart of the ‘extended deterrence’ strategy, in which the US commitment to use nuclear weapons in the defence of Europe offsets the Warsaw Pact’s perceived conventional superiority. The notion of Western inferiority runs through much of today’s public debate on security policy — the INF Treaty, the future of nuclear and conventional arms control, US and Allied defence programmes, the burden-sharing debate, and so forth. These debates have spawned a new round of discussions on the nature of the conventional military balance in Europe and will affect US and Western policies.
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