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Ending the Confrontation in Europe
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14507 |
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BOOK WORLD
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3 / 1988 |
4,813 Words |
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Peter Sharfman
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CONSOLIDATING PEACE IN EUROPE
A Dialogue between East and West
Morton A. Kaplan, ed.
New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1987
260 pp., $24.95
WATERSHED IN EUROPE
Dismantling the East-West Military Confrontation
Jonathan Dean
Lexington, Ma.: Lexington Books, 1987
304 pp., $9.95
The conclusion of the INF treaty at the Washington summit last December was a major event in the history of postwar Europe, but exactly what its significance was remains to be seen. Indeed, the decisions and actions that the United States and our NATO allies take over the next months and years may lead future historians to view this treaty as a triumph, a disaster, or perhaps a side issue which little affected the fundamentals of the European confrontation. Although President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev agreed at the summit to try to shift the "action" in arms control from Europe to strategic weapons, the signing of the INF treaty marks the beginning, not the end, of a critical period for NATO.
The two books reviewed here, Consolidating Peace in Europe and Watershed in Europe, which approach essentially the same questions from quite different perspectives, are intended to provoke thought and debate about the perils and the possibilities of the existing situation in Europe--and about what can be done to steer change in the direction of greater security for all of us. They are indeed provocative, but more than that they serve as guidebooks through the mazes of fundamental national interests, the irrationalities of recent history, and the intersections of political goals and military necessities.
NATO's early strategies
NATO was founded in 1949 in response to two Soviet moves in 1948: the Berlin blockade, and the coup in Czechoslovakia that replaced a relatively free government ruled by a coalition of communist and democratic leaders with a communist dictatorship. The lesson drawn by the West was that Stalin would seek to take advantage of the overwhelming military strength of the Soviet Union to impose political domination. (Czechoslovakia was occupied by Soviet troops, and Berlin was completely surrounded by the Soviet-occupied sector of Germany.) However, it was argued that Stalin could be deterred or restrained by Western unity and determination. Hence the main point of NATO--in 1949--was to draw a clear line. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty proclaimed that within the defined territory of NATO, an attack on any member would be treated as an attack upon all. In other words, an attack on any NATO country would mean war against the United States, still the world's only nuclear power. A Soviet Union that did not dare to shoot down the U.S. Air Force transport planes carrying supplies into blockaded Berlin would certainly not dare to invade NATO territory. More than that, the democratic governments of Western Europe could rebuild their economies and their free political systems without fearing that the communist parties of Western Europe would stage insurrections in the hope of receiving prompt support from the red
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