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won or limited, the deployment .of these new missiles gives them a
capacity far in excess of what is required for nuclear deterrence.
Why then have the Russians been accumulating these weapons in
the absence of any comparable build-up in Western Europe in the
1970s? The answer is that they hope to use their military power to
gain political objectives without actually having to go to war.
In the foreground of the nuclear debate in the West have been
the specter of nuclear holocaust and the rejection of deterrence by
both
unilateral disarmers from the Left and strategists of nuclear war
from the Right. There has been little discussion of the consequences
of a West European rejection of the double decision and of increased
commitments to defense. But it is not hard to imagine what these
consequences would be. Certainly the least likely outcome of a West
European rejection of American nuclear weapons would be an
increase in spending on conventional forces by the Western
Europeans.
If
the Soviet Union could retain its SS-20 arsenal and
prevent NATO from deploying its medium-range missiles by
playing on the fears of the Western public, the Russians would
demonstrate the political power of nuclear weapons. They would
certainly increase political pressure on Western Europe, and for
simple geographical reasons become the dominant power in Europe,
having split the Atlantic alliance and achieved a "nuclear free zone
from Poland to Portugal." Without the balance of American power,
the capitalist, rich, politically divided, and militarily weak welfare
states of Western Europe would be forced to accommodate to more
and more Soviet political aims and economic interests. The fear of a
nuclear holocaust whipped up by the peace movements in the West
would constitute an enormous incentive to create a neutral,
"Finlandized" Europe. The neutralization of Western Europe would
further isolate the United States . In such a climate of over–
whelming Soviet power, it is difficult to imagine how liberal,
democratic institutions and values would survive. Worst of all, who
could guarantee that without adequate conventional or nuclear
deterrence Western Europe would not be attacked anyway?
Within the Western defense and foreign policy establishment,
the double decision has its critics. They have argued that it would be
preferable to deploy the missiles at sea, that the main problem is the
inadequacy of Western Europe's conventional forces, and that the
focus on nuclear strategy has allowed the anti-NATO groups in
Europe to avoid the general question of their own defense. But even
