West European Arms Control Policy

European arms control policy and domestic policy processes in the four major West European countries (the United Kingdom, France, West Germany, and Italy) are assessed in this study, based on extensive interviews with governmental and opinion-making leaders in these four nations. The interview data are unique and make possible for the first time this kind of analysis of West European defense policy. The contributors assess the impact of the INF treaty and arms control developments since the Reagan-Gorbachev meeting in Reykjavik.

The main focus of this project has been upon the executive decision making systems in four major European countries, namely the United Kingdom, France, West Germany, and Italy. The focus on arms control decision making in Western Europe necessitated conducting extensive interviews with a wide range of West European government and opinion elites. Virtually all of the major West European political and administrative officials in the arms control area have been interviewed at least once and some have been interviewed several times.

In October 1987 on the eve of the Washington summit, the Committee on Atlantic Studies, a group of European and North American scholars established in 1964 to promote transatlantic dialogue, met in Toronto to discuss the implications of the new arms control for European security. This book is the fruit of that meeting. Incorporating subsequent developments, up to Gorbachev's December 1988 speech to the U.N., it provides a timely assessment of arms control issues from a variety of European and North American perspectives. The contributors to this volume council caution, suggesting that while progress is possible, it will probably be slow. At a time when arms control has arrived at a significant crossroads, the issues raised in Arms Control and European Security are of critical importance to both Europeans and Americans. This volume stresses the interplay of strategic and regional arms control. It includes analyses of nuclear, conventional, and naval arms control questions and embodies a broader conception of arms control. The book links arms control to such political measures as confidence-building, conflict avoidance and superpower agreement to the neutrality of particular states.

This book represents an overview of European security affairs as of 1989–1990. It deals with fundamental theoretical and political-strategic considerations; looks at arms-control developments; and examines European defense economies and military industrial capabilities of U.S. .

This book, first published in 1982, examines the crisis of détente in Europe and between the superpowers, the crisis in arms control, and the heightening of tensions within NATO, and analyses the central precepts of Western policy and thought in these areas. These crises are examined in terms of the trends, thought and action in the area of Western security. In particular, the concept of strategic stability, the assumptions behind arms control, and between arms control and security policy, are critically analysed.

This important and timely work, prepared by the leading researchers, planners, and policymakers from both Eastern and Western alliances, analyzes the major issues in the Vienna talks on conventional forces in Europe involving NATO and Warsaw Pact nations. It is likely to have a significant influence on the course of these negotiations and on emerging debate on conventional arms control. The contributors met in Moscow prior to the Vienna conference to review and compare their analyses and revised them thereafter for publication in this work.