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European Security After the INF Treaty
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13677 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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8 / 1988 |
4,581 Words |
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Jed C. Snyder
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When Secretary of State George Shultz traveled to Brussels to report to the allies on the results of the Moscow summit, he found that while his audience supported the warming trend in U.S.-Soviet relations, their enthusiasm was tempered by an audible sigh of relief that President Reagan did not walk away with another arms control treaty; that the "spirit of Reykjavik" was not replicated in Moscow. The allies were ironically grateful that human rights rather than arms control dominated the president's summit agenda.
Allied ambivalence about the "new détente" illustrates the schizophrenic approach that America's security partners in Europe feel that they must take toward their own security. This schizophrenia has been fueled by the now-ratified agreement to remove all intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) from Europe. Although this condition has characterized Europe's approach to its defense since the NATO treaty was signed nearly four decades ago, the INF agreement has exposed this infirmity to close scrutiny and will likely force a public and painful assessment of NATO's weaknesses at a time when the alliance is least likely to respond favorably.
That such an examination is due cannot be contested. The INF treaty, however, moves the alliance in exactly the wrong direction: away from a reasoned approach to bolstering the European-based component of the nuclear deterrent, while enhancing the conventional force posture, and toward a progressive denuclearization of the continent that will simultaneously remove any incentive to repair the eroding ground and air capabilities of the allies. In sum, this author does not share the widely held view that the "zero-zero" solution of "removing an entire class of nuclear weapons" will ipso facto promote military stability in Europe--quite the contrary.
It can be argued that this agreement could actually weaken allied determination to reinforce NATO's anemic posture, when:
·allied political will to bolster the alliance's conventional deterrent is at an all-time low;
·the credibility of the American nuclear guarantee to protect Europe has suffered under the negative pressures of congressionally imposed spending restrictions on strategic weapons systems and 15 years of presidential indecision regarding the direction of U.S. strategic missile research;
·larger segments of European publics have developed a nuclear allergy against which NATO appears powerless to inoculate them;
·NATO governments (as well as disgruntled opposition spokesmen) are adopting an increasingly hostile attitude toward allowing a continued American military presence on their soil, which could threaten U.S. ability to reinforce Europe in a crisis; and
·a rising bipartisan tide within the American defense community and the U.S. Congress, supporting a progressive reduction of the American military presence in NATO Europe, threatens the viability of extended deterrence.
The history of the INF debate is well known to all serious observers and therefore will not be repeated here. There is, however, little appreciation of the
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