Western European Defense

Abstract

It is still quite likely that by the year 2000 the security of Western Europe will rest on the same three pillars as today: the alliance with the United States to provide the indispensable counterweight to the Soviet Union and its inherent geostrategic superiority; the combination of deterrence and defense with detente and arms control, as enunciated in the “Harmel Report” of 1967; and a strategy of “flexible response” to Soviet aggression, linking conventional, theater nuclear, and U.S. strategic nuclear forces for purposes of both deterrence and, should deterrence fail, defense. However, it is also virtually certain that each pillar will increasingly be subjected to stresses which have their roots in NATO’s built-in contradiction between U.S. and Western European interests regarding nuclear escalation and in political, generational, and economic trends. By 2000, then, continuity in the structure of Western Europe’s defense will probably have prevailed over substantial change more for lack of a feasible alternative to, than because of any intrinsic strength in, NATO’s fiber.