Concern has grown in recent years about Europe's dependence on nuclear weapons for its security. The credibility of the current NATO strategy of flexible response is being questioned. It is widely felt that NATO should strengthen its conventional force capability in order to raise the nuclear threshold. New developments in technology appear to offer hope that a main obstacle to an effective conventional defense against conventional attack, its cost, can at last be overcome. This report gives a wide overview of the implications of these developments. Concentrating on central Europe, it examines the question whether the continued maintenance of an effective strategy of deterrence requires a change in the relationship between the conventional and nuclear elements of it. It considers the adoption of a no-first-use policy buttressed by conventional force improvements large enough to create a permanent conventional force balance in Europe. The report concludes that improving conventional forces to the point of equivalence with the Warsaw Pact would risk decoupling the defense of Europe against conventional attack from the United States' nuclear umbrella and would thus reduce deterrence as well as damage the cohesion of the Alliance.

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.

This book, first published in 1990, is an incisive examination of NATO’s strategy for the defence of the central front – the concern that has lain at the heart of NATO since its formation. Politically, the central front marked the post-war division of Europe into two competing blocs; militarily, it has represented the area of greatest force concentration and greatest threat. As NATO’s strategic agenda changed with the end of the Cold War, the central front remained a critical concern. This book analyses the structure, strategy and doctrines of both East and West, and examines the relationship of NATO strategy to conventional force doctrines.

Examines the debate within the North Atlantic Alliance about the strategic concept of flexible response and its implications for the evolution of NATO's theater nuclear posture and employment doctrine from 1967 to 1991.

In this analysis of key doctrines, plans and policies at the centre of the controversy about Western deterrence and defence, the author points to "doctrinal deficiencies", and examines NATO ideas on escalation and policy in terms of both logical consistency and implication for strategy.

Was Britain's implementation of NATO strategy credible? After the adoption of Flexible Response in 1967 NATO relied on conventional forces to defend the West. Britain had a central role in NATO's plans, but was British defense planning adequate for the task? How did the Government plan for the use of the conventional Armed Forces for the range of operations it was committed to? How were the Armed Forces to be mobilized, and what was the detail of the planning for mobilization? In 1967 MC14/3 was adopted as the overall strategic concept by NATO. It relied on an escalatory deterrence, from conventional through tactical nuclear strikes to strategic nuclear attack. This is commonly known as Flexible Response and replaced NATO's trip-wire response. The declared principal of the strategic concept was to reduce the chance of mistakenly starting a nuclear war, meeting force with like force, and raising the nuclear threshold in the event of actual war. By using newly available documents from British and other archives, this volume will show that far from being a flexible strategy, in the event of a war it was doomed to failure. The concept was compromised by the failure of the Alliance members to provide one of the main legs of the conventional deterrent - sustainability. This book analyses the paradox between the public face of defense policy and the practice. The book assesses whether the planning would have worked, and what would have happened in Europe if war had broken out. To answer this question the research looks at the conflicts in the Falklands and the Gulf to assess the feasibility of the plans in place. Elements upon which British defense depended were still being built more than twenty years after the new strategy was adopted. Defense policy in Britain was concerned less with the threats the country faced than with just how little could be spent on defense.