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This book examines the processes of nuclear policymaking in NATO and the interaction of alliance strategy with the docrines underlying it. Dr. Buteux focuses on the issue of theatre nuclear force modernisation to illustrate his thesis that NATO's strategic posture results from a political process in which other than purely strategic objectives are sought; agreements on alliance strategy may in fact be related only indirectly to the actual military posture of the alliance and the means available to support it. The book highlights the cumulative effect of strategic and technological change on the strategy and nuclear politics of NATO. Emphasizing that the present strategic environment has called into question many of the strategic and political premises on which NATO's nuclear posture has been based, Dr. Buteux gives special attention to recent proposals to deploy enhanced-radiation weapons (the "neutron bomb") and new intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe. He considers the impact of these proposals on NATO's nuclear policymaking process and on the ability of the alliance to continue to base its deterrent posture on the concept of flexible response
After more than a decade of comparatively little public interest in matters of nuclear strategy, the last few years have seen a resurgence of concern about the policy of nuclear deterrence that the North Atlantic Alliance has followed since the early 1950s. In Europe in particular, this concern has centered on the role of theater nuclear weapons in NATO strategy. This report briefly examines the way in which that strategy evolved from the foundation of the Alliance in 1949 to the formal adoption of the current "flexible response" strategy in 1967, with particular reference to the role of theater nuclear weapons. It then traces the development within the NATO Nuclear Planning Group of the more detailed doctrine concerning the role of theater nuclear weapons within the overall strategy, which led inter alia to the decision taken by NATO in 1979 to modernize the long-term component of the theater nuclear forces. The report examines the main arguments that have been advanced against the current flexible response strategy, and considers the merits of various alternative strategies. The report finally considers ways in which the Alliance's theater nuclear stockpile might be adapted to meet the political and strategic needs of the 1980s.
Meeting in December 1979, the NATO Foreign and Defense Ministers decided to modernize NATO's long-range theater nuclear force (LRTNF) by deploying, in Europe, 108 Pershing II medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) launchers and 464 ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs). NATO Secretary General Joseph Luns announced that these systems would be based in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), Italy, and the United Kingdom, and possibly Belgium and the Netherlands. Attaching 'great importance to the role of arms control in contributing to a more stable military relationship between East and West and in advancing the process of detente, ' the Ministers emphasized that, in parallel with the deployment decision, they wished to continue arms control efforts designed to achieve 'a more stable overall nuclear balance at lower levels of nuclear weapons, ' to involve theater as well as strategic nuclear forces. A Special Consultative Group was created to continue work on the arms control aspects of the LRTNF issue. With this decision NATO's member states sought to resolve an issue that had been raised nearly three years before, and that had commanded increasing amounts of attention ever since.
For more than forty years NATO premised its defence on credible nuclear deterrence. Underwriting this deterrence was NATO's strategy and the nuclear weapons and command and control systems intended to make the strategy an operational reality. This book examines NATO's attempts between 1952 and 1990 to achieve the political and military control of nuclear weapons operations in a multinational organisation. By using case-studies of US, British, French and NATO nuclear weapons operations and empirical evidence from Cold War crises it provides an analysis of NATO's experience and offers insights for the present day.