A Strategy for Terminating a Nuclear War by Clark C. Abt

Author:Clark C. Abt [Abt, Clark C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Peace, Political Science
ISBN: 9780813370507
Google: elPbAAAAMAAJ
Goodreads: 6227708
Publisher: Westview Press
Published: 1985-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

IN WEST GERMANY

The termination strategy would probably be received with mixed feelings by most West Germans. Political impact would depend most on whether United States and West German leaders, in and out of office, propose it, privately or publicly. If the strategy is not considered at all by these leadership groups, it is unlikely to have any political impact at all. If, however, it is seriously discussed in policy circles, it could have significant political impact on conservative, liberal, and radical groups in West Germany.

Objectively, the termination strategy presents the same set of military security and political advantages and costs to all West German domestic audiences. However, the value of its different features will differ for different groups. Also, the different groups are likely to evaluate the strategy quite differently because they would compare it to different alternatives from those used in the evaluation in this book. For example, some Social Democrats and the Greens would probably add the "neutralization" or "Finlandization" of the Federal Republic of Germany, its departure from NATO in exchange for East Germany's departure from the Warsaw Pact, and at first nuclear and then the more general demilitarization of a peacefully reunited Germany, as desirable features of a significant alternative strategy for terminating a nuclear war in central Europe before it has even begun.

The West German political groups seriously considering this national security policy alternative may find that the termination strategy includes only modest steps toward their ultimate goal of peaceful reunification (e.g., cities excluded from nuclear targeting, and exclusion of even battlefield nuclear weapons use on West German soil). However, these modest steps in what they might regard as the right direction could appear to some West Germans to be overbalanced by the proposed increase in mobilization capacity of conventional forces required to threaten retaliatory invasion.

Worse yet, the termination strategy's threat of retaliatory invasion of Eastern Europe could be interpreted as having the impact of hardening Soviet resistance to peaceful reunification of the two Germanys. With the prospect of retaliatory invasion facing them, the Soviets might be seen by these German groups to feel an increased need to maintain the largest possible Eastern European defensive buffer against a threatened Western counter-invasion. The Soviets would be perceived as wanting to maintain substantial Red Army forces in East Germany to better deter or defend against such a counter-invasion and to keep Poland from being an adjacent and receptive ground for such Western invasion forces.

Whatever the NATO Cities Targeting Exclusion policy, these groups (and perhaps many other Europeans) might remain skeptical of the Soviet's exercising reciprocal restraints on their nuclear targeting. The West Germans already fear the willingness of the rest of NATO to fight the Soviets on German soil "to the last German." They are likely to fear even more, and have good reason to fear, that the Soviets would be even more willing to defend their control of Eastern Europe to the last German. (West Germans would go first, but East Germans could also be sacrificed by the Soviets if necessary.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.