Defending Post-INF Europe

Jeffrey Record and David B. Rivkin, Jr.

From Foreign Affairs, Spring 1988

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Summary:  Defends the traditional, pessimistic evaluation of NATO's conventional capabilities against revisionists, and argues that "NATO is highly unlikely to make the conventional force improvements seemingly dictated by the INF treaty". Predicts a Soviet arms control offensive upon "a vulnerable and divided NATO... the alliance has painted itself into a corner, and the paint will not dry". Despite all this, NATO will continue to prevent war in Europe.

Jeffrey Record, formerly Legislative Assistant for National Security Affairs to Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), is a Senior Research Fellow at the Hudson Institute. David B. Rivkin, Jr., is an attorney with the Washington, D.C., office of Baker and McKenzie, and a defense consultant.

A substantial denuclearization of Europe is at hand. It takes the form of the U.S.-Soviet treaty that eliminates two entire classes of nuclear missiles (though not their warheads) now deployed in Europe and the U.S.S.R. The Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty has profound implications for conventional deterrence and defense on the Continent. It is also likely to have major repercussions for NATO?s cohesion, arms control negotiations and the future of U.S.-European relations.

Critics and skeptics, among them Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Congressman Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), recently retired NATO Supreme Commander General Bernard Rogers and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.), contend that any degree of denuclearization of Europe not tied in some way to a redress of the conventional military balance, which continues to favor the Soviet Union, could make Europe safe for conventional warfare on a scale not witnessed since 1945.

Even partial denuclearization, it is asserted, would work against NATO by removing many of the very weapons that the alliance for almost forty years has judged an effective and comparatively cheap means of deterring the Soviet Union?s use of its numerically superior and geographically advantaged conventional forces in Europe.

Finally, critics are concerned over the treaty?s direct and unfavorable impact on future modernization of NATO?s conventional defenses. The treaty bans deployment of all ballistic and cruise missiles?non-nuclear as well as nuclear?with ranges from 500 to 5,500 kilometers. Such a ban forecloses to NATO the preferred, long-term means of implementing its declared Follow-on Forces Attack (FOFA) strategy, which calls for deep interdiction strikes using conventional munitions on Soviet air bases, communications centers and westward-moving ground reinforcement echelons in Eastern Europe. Critics further point out that removal of theater nuclear missiles and banning of non-nuclear missiles will compel the alliance to allocate a significantly larger portion of its deployed tactical air power, already severely burdened by non-nuclear operational requirements, to theater nuclear strike missions.

Supporters insist that the treaty is a major arms control breakthrough that could help promote a comprehensive strategic arms agreement. It is further claimed that removal from Europe of U.S. Pershing 2 and Soviet SS-20 ballistic missiles, along with other ballistic and cruise missiles, will enhance conflict stability on the Continent by lowering the chances that a war in Europe, an admittedly remote possibility, would escalate to nuclear Armageddon. It is also argued that reduced reliance on NATO?s nuclear "crutch" will at long last prompt greater NATO investment in Europe?s conventional defenses, plagued for decades by deficiencies regarded as tolerable only in the presence of a robust theater nuclear deterrent.

Critics, however, manifest little confidence in NATO?s willingness and ability to offset denuclearization by improving the alliance?s conventional defenses. The history of NATO has in fact been a history of heavy reliance on nuclear weapons, driven in part by a congenital reluctance of NATO?s European members to fund anything other than the minimal conventional force improvements believed necessary to keep the Americans happy. Since the early 1960s, the United States has ...

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