The New Thinking about Armed Forces in West and East: Can It Help in East/West Negotiations?

  • Jonathan Dean

Abstract

The intense controversy of the early 1980s over deployment of new American intermediate-range nuclear missiles had important effects on thinking in western Europe about defense. It crystallized longstanding doubts and concerns about NATO’s military posture into a sweeping and fundamental criticism of that posture. The result was the generation of an array of proposals to change the entire structure of western defense unilaterally. These proposals have been given many names: alternative defense, non-provocative defense, structural incapacity for attack, reactive defense. There is no standard designation. I prefer “non-offensive defense,” because this term seems to me best to capture the intention of the theorizers.

Keywords

Nuclear Weapon Offensive Defense Ground Force Defense Expert Warsaw Pact 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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Notes and References

  1. 4.
    Horst Atheldt, Defensive Verteidigung, Reinbek, Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 1983;Google Scholar
  2. Norbert Hannig, Verteidigen Ohne Zu Bedrohen, November, 1986, AFES, Institut für Politik und Wissenschaft, Universität Stuttgart.Google Scholar
  3. 5.
    Studiengruppe Alternative Sicherheitspolitik, Strukturwandel der Verteidigung, Opladen, Westdeutcher Verlag, 1984; Lutz Unterseher, Defending Europe: Toward a Stable Deterrent, Studiengruppe Alternative Sicherheitspolitik, Bonn, 1986;Google Scholar
  4. John Grin and Lutz Unterseher, “The Spiderweb Defense,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September 1988.Google Scholar
  5. 6.
    Albrecht A. C. von Mueller, The Integrated Forward Defense, Starnberg, 1985; “Confidence Building by Hardware Measures,” paper for the 34th Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, July 1984; “Structural Stability at the Central Front,” Paper no. 13, Niels Bohr Centennial, University of Copenhagen, September, 1985.Google Scholar
  6. 7.
    Karsten Voigt, Konventionelle Stabilisierung und strukturelle Nightangriffsfähigkeit, Bonn, Beilage Zum Parliament, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschehen, 1988.Google Scholar
  7. 10.
    See Vitaly Zhurkin, Sergei Karaganov, Andrei Kortunov, “Reasonable Sufficiency—or How to Break the Vicious Circle,” Moscow, New Times, Oct. 12, 1987.Google Scholar
  8. 12.
    See A. Kokoshin and V. Larionov, “The Battle of Kursk from the Standpoint of Defensive Doctrine,” in World Economy and International Relations, Moscow, no. 8, 1987;Google Scholar
  9. and A. Kokoshin and V. Larionov, “The General Setting of Opposing Forces in the Context of Guaranteeing Strategic Stabilization,” World Economy and International Relations, Moscow, June, 1988.Google Scholar
  10. 13.
    See David Holloway, “Gorbachev’s New Thinking,” in Foreign Affairs, America and the World, 1988/89.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Union of Concerned Scientists 1989

Authors and Affiliations

  • Jonathan Dean
    • 1
  1. 1.Union of Concerned ScientistsUSA

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