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Alternative Defence — Answer to the Bundeswehr’s Post-INF Problems?

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Book cover The Bundeswehr and Western Security

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Abstract

In the early 1980s, intense controversy over deployment of new American intermediate-range nuclear missiles brought insistent questioning in Western Europe of the existing NATO defence posture and a steady stream of proposals calling for its radical reorganization. These ideas have been most numerous in Federal Germany, where the bulk of NATO ground forces face the main Warsaw Pact standing forces, and where opposition to missile deployment was most intense. The resultant debate between proponents of new approaches and supporters of the current NATO force posture has focused essentially on two main themes: the feasibility of non-nuclear defence; and the merits of static defence based on high-tech microelectronics — sensors, and rocket launchers using precision-guided munitions — versus mobile defence based on tanks and other armoured platforms.

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Notes

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  1. Jonathan Dean
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National War College, USA

    Stephen F. Szabo (Associate Dean of Faculty, Professorial Lecturer) (Associate Dean of Faculty, Professorial Lecturer)

  2. European Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, USA

    Stephen F. Szabo (Associate Dean of Faculty, Professorial Lecturer) (Associate Dean of Faculty, Professorial Lecturer)

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© 1990 Stephen F. Szabo

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Dean, J. (1990). Alternative Defence — Answer to the Bundeswehr’s Post-INF Problems?. In: Szabo, S.F. (eds) The Bundeswehr and Western Security. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11032-2_10

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