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PARTISAN REVIEW
United States administration have made the subjective effects of that
objective change on the German public much worse than they would
otherwise have been; that the resulting West German peace move–
ment has been basically motivated by fear, including fear of an in–
calculable United States policy, but only in a minority section by
"neutralist" tendencies and only quite marginally by nationalist
dreams; and that the first steps for overcoming the crisis, so far as
they depend on the Germans, may already be in the process of being
taken - and taken not only on the side of the present government ,
but also of the Social Democratic opposition.
1.
From the beginning of the so-called "balance of terror" between
the two nuclear superpowers, the borderline between the areas con–
trolled by them has run along the frontier between East and West
Germany. Ever since then, nuclear weapons have been stationed on
both sides of that frontier- weapons over which the Germans had no
control. The German people have thus lived not only for more than
thirty years in a divided country, but for almost as long with nuclear
weapons in the hands of opposing powers on their soil . What is re–
markable is the comparative equanimity with which they have lived
under those conditions until a few years ago.
One source of that equanimity on the West German side was
that, until at least the middle sixties, the United States possessed a
clear nuclear superiority. This meant that the Soviets had no pros–
pect of success in a nuclear war, and the United States had no mo–
tive for it. It also meant that the Soviets were effectively deterred
from even a conventional attack on a point of vital interest to the
United States - such as West Germany and even West Berlin. What
is called "extended deterrence," in other words, nuclear deterrence of
attacks on non-American territories of vital interest to the United
States, was generally regarded as credible under conditions of clear
American nuclear superiority. The nuclear weapons of the United
States effectively protected West Germany without having to be used.
One of these conditions ended when in the late sixties, the So–
viets began to approach nuclear parity: the administration of Presi–
dent Nixon and Security Adviser Kissinger decided to attempt to
stabilize the strategic nuclear balance by negotiations rather than
engage in a destabilizing nuclear arms race. The resulting first
