The Balance of Conventional Forces in Central Europe

Abstract

The long and widely-held view that NATO conventional military forces are inferior to Warsaw Pact forces is arguably one of the most important underlying factors shaping postwar history. It shaped 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 perceived Warsaw Pact’s conventional superiority. Today the perception of Western inferiority runs through much of the 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, a debate which will affect US and Western policies.