Abstract
In early 1989 NATO was shaken by a dispute over replacing the Lance short-range ballistic missile with a new technically advanced missile known as Follow-on-to-Lance (FOTL) with three times the range. The acrimonious FOTL controversy, and the parallel short-range nuclear force (SNF) negotiations row, were the last in a long series of Alliance nuclear crises. These periodic debates reflected longstanding differences among the allies over the role of theatre nuclear forces (TNF) in NATO strategy; political constraints on members’ security policies; and divergent national perceptions of and reactions to the international security environment and American leadership. This last debate was no exception. It turned out to be the last great NATO nuclear debate of the Cold War. This book analyses it as the logical conclusion of those which had gone before. Because the 1980s SNF story is integrally linked to NATO’s intermediate-range nuclear force (INF) trauma, the book begins with the December 1979 INF deployment decision which set the political and military parameters within which the SNF debate unfolded. By investigating the evolution of NATO nuclear doctrine, deployments and decision-making for short-range nuclear systems in the decade 1979–1989, the book explains developments which have been either incompletely analyzed or overlooked in the tremendous attention given to the INF story.
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Notes
Programmes of Cooperation are bilateral agreements between America and states on whose territory US nuclear warheads are based and deployed. They regulate the locations, movement and reporting requirements, and stipulate the responsibilities of the two parties for regulating the use and control of nuclear systems. See Catherine Kelleher, ‘NATO Nuclear Operations’, in Ashton B. Carter, John D. Steinbruner and Charles A. Zraket (eds), Managing Nuclear Operations (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1987), pp. 445–69.
See J. Michael Legge, Theater Nuclear Weapons and the NATO Strategy of Flexible Response (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 1983), pp. 17–38.
See Buteux, The Politics of Nuclear Consultation in NATO 1965–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
James Schlesinger, ‘The Theatre Nuclear Force Posture in Europe; Report to Congress by Secretary of Defense Schlesinger’, Survival, 17:5, September/October 1975, p. 237.
Arnold Kanter, ‘Nuclear Weapons and Conventional Arms Control’, in Robert D. Blackwill and F. Stephen Larrabee (eds), Conventional Arms Control & East—West Security (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 438.
These debates and activities have been well documented by others, see for example Ivo H. Daalder, The Nature and Practice of Flexible Response (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), pp. 69–90
Susanne Peters, The Germans and the INF Missiles: Getting their Way in NATO’s Strategy of Flexible Response (Baden Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1990), pp. 96–106
J. Michael Legge, Theatre Nuclear Weapons and the NATO Strategy of Flexible Response (Santa Monica CA: RAND Corporation, 1983), pp. 17–26
‘Theater nuclear forces provide the capability to terminate, if necessary, a conflict at less than a strategic nuclear level of intensity, on terms acceptable to the United States and its allies.’ George S. Brown, U.S. Military Posture 1978 (Washington, DC: US GPO, 1978), p. 85.
See Lawrence Freedman, ‘NATO Myths’, Foreign Policy, No. 45, Winter 1981–82, p. 53.
Uwe Nerlich, ‘Theatre Nuclear Forces in Europe: Is NATO Running Out of Options?’ The Washington Quarterly, Winter 1980, p. 120.
See also Josef Joffe, ‘Nuclear Weapons, No First Use, and European Order’, in Russell Hardin, John J. Mearsheimer, Gerald Dworkin and Robert E. Goodin (eds), Nuclear Deterrence Ethics and Strategy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 240
K. Peter Stratmann, ‘Modernization and Deployment of Nuclear Forces in Europe Agreed Constraints in the Stabilization of Deterrence’, in Uwe Nerlich (ed.), The Western Panacea: Constraining Soviet Power Through Negotiation (Cambridge MA: Ballinger Publishing, 1983), pp. 326, 327
See Lothar Rühl, ‘Technology, Deterrence and the NATO Alliance’, in Lawrence S. Hagen (ed.), The Crisis in Western Security (London: Croom Helm, 1982), p. 151
Joseph Joffe, ‘Allies, Angst, and Arms Control: New Troubles for an Old Partnership’, in Masha McGraw Olive and Jeffrey D. Porro (eds), Nuclear Weapons in Europe (Lexington MA: Lexington Books, 1983), p. 31.
Interviews with British officials. The MOD, although sceptical of the military uses of AFAP, argued that they served important purposes in broadening participation among the smaller countries. For an example of Army hostility see Field Marshal Lord Carver, ‘A Window of Opportunity’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 1984, pp. 10–12.
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© 1995 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Halverson, T.E. (1995). Introduction. In: The Last Great Nuclear Debate. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230377882_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230377882_1
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