The case for eliminating battlefield nuclear weapons
The primary reasons for the elimination of NATO's BNW are two. First, BNW are superfluous for deterrence. Other weapons are better suited for that purpose. Second, and more important, any deployment of nuclear weapons in Western Europe necessarily involves three critical trade-offs: a trade-off between deterrence and reassurance in peacetime, a trade-off between deterrence and crisis stability in times of high political tension, and a trade-off between deterrence and controlled use in war. Whatever purpose BNW purportedly serve as deterrents come at a disproportionate cost to peacetime reassurance, crisis stability, and wartime control. The continued presence of BNW in Western Europe is hard to explain in rational terms; it is more readily explicable by organizational and political inertia. To see why continued inertia is dangerous, the author first examine briefly the military purposes that nuclear weapons allegedly serve for NATO - that is, what they are said to deter and how. Then, he examines the paradoxes in the logic of deterrence of conventional attack in Europe and, flowing from those paradoxes, the critical policy dilemmas posed by BNW. Next, and fundamental to the discussion, he raises the critical organizational and political predicaments that any coherent strategy for continued deployment of these weapons must overcome. Finally, he discusses the political ramifications of keeping these weapons in place.
- OSTI ID:
- 6714954
- Journal Information:
- Arms Control Today; (USA), Vol. 19:7; ISSN 0196-125X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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