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have tended to portray the United States as a threat to peace greater
than, or at least equal to , the Soviets . These voices remain a
minority in public opinion and are more of a presence among
intellectuals, especially in Great Britain and West Germany.
It is too early to tell if neutralism in Western Europe will
assume such dimensions as to make the continued existence of the
Atlantic alliance impossible. But the costs and the risks of the
American commitment to extend methods of nuclear and
conventional deterrence to Western Europe are so considerable that
it is doubtful that they can be politically sustained in the United
States if Americans believe that a significant minority of Western
Europeans are opposed to Atlanticism and/or an effective defense
policy in Europe. We must remember that the countries of Western
Europe are democracies and the United States cannot force a
defense policy on an unwilling polity. Either a noncommunist
consensus concerning the requirements of the defense of Western
Europe will be established in West Germany and Great Britain, or
the Atlantic alliance will be viewed in those countries as a union of
the political right. Should that occur, NATO could not survive .
The reason behind the decision to place American missiles in
Western Europe was not, as its opponents have claimed , to facilitate
fighting a nuclear war limited to Europe or a first strike against
Soviet command centers-the so-called decapitation strategy. The
decision was made, as the British strategist and military historian
Michael Howard put it recently, to reassure the Western Europeans
and reinforce deterrence with the Soviet Union. The Western
Europeans needed reassurance when the Soviet Union's achieve–
ment of nuclear parity with the United States put into question the
American promise to " extend" nuclear deterrence to Western
Europe. Ever since the Soviet Union has had the capacity to attack
the United States with nuclear weapons, the American commitment
to Western Europe has brought with it the risk of nuclear attacks on
American soil . The governments of Western Europe, fearing that
the United States would " decouple " from their defense , have
welcomed three hundred thousand American troops in Europe as
both a considerable conventional fighting force and an assurance of
the use of American nuclear weapons. (The United States has also
placed nuclear weapons in Western Europe, the Tactical Nuclear
Forces or TNF, which cannot reach the Soviet Union .)
The Soviet Union is well aware that if the United States were to
