The SDI and European security interests
This paper examines Europe's reactions to President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). On the one hand, the American proposals have inspired forceful European opposition of a kind potentially damaging to Alliance solidarity. On the other, paradoxically, the debate occurred in a period of rare Alliance harmony, when the deployment of cruise and Pershing II missiles was satisfactorily completed despite Soviet hostility. Yet the nature of the discussion and the compromises reached between Europe and the United States on the SDI have meant that a true strategic debate has not yet begun. Although the SDI is largely an American response to an American strategic problem, Europeans are intimately affected by many of its implications. The author argues that if the SDI program is not to cause great difficulties in the future a more sophisticated discussion of the purposes of strategic defense must now be undertaken. Contents. Introduction; defense in the nuclear age; defense or deterrence: The limits of western consensus; the Euro-American debate on the SDI; European concerns and American responses; and conclusion.
- OSTI ID:
- 6301790
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
POLICY AND ECONOMY
BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE
POLITICAL ASPECTS
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
WESTERN EUROPE
NATIONAL SECURITY
AGREEMENTS
FOREIGN POLICY
INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
MILITARY STRATEGY
NUCLEAR DETERRENCE
PROLIFERATION
COOPERATION
EUROPE
GOVERNMENT POLICIES
INSTITUTIONAL FACTORS
NATIONAL DEFENSE
SECURITY
WEAPONS
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