ABSTRACT: This paper deals with the U.S. policymaking on the modernization of NATO Theater Nuclear Weapons. Although the debate, both in the Alliance and in Washington, has largely focused on one specific weapon system the successor to the Lance missile the first two chapters offer a more general background: to the various arms involved as well as to the rationale for their development and deployment.

Going through the index, it may be objected that too much attention has been devoted to a number of actors who play well outside the Capital Beltway. The choice has been forced upon me, though, by the fact that the dstinctive feature of the current, postmodern presidency is, apparently, "going international." Besides, any major foreign policy issue is hardly understandable from the U.S. perspective alone; without, that is, the counterpoint of allies and competitors alike. Accordingly, however, the conclusions will also touch upon some issues outside the American policy process per se.

(Paper published bu the School of Public Affairs, the University of Maryland, July 1989)

1. Some background on the software

The U.S. began deploying nuclear weapons in Europe immediately after World War 2. One rationale for these deployments had to do with the range limitations of early nuclear delivery systems: B47 bombers in the '40s, Thor and Jupiter Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBM) in the '50s. These systems could reach targets in the Soviet Union only if based in Europe and were withdrawn as longerrange, U.S.based, intercontinental bombers and missiles entered service.

Theater Nuclear Weapons (TNW) initially artillery shells and shortrange rockets were first introduced in Europe in

195354. As NATO's official wisdom has it, they were deployed by the U.S. to compensate for the Alliance conventional inferiority visavis 175 Soviet divisions. Coupled with the Eisenhower administration's tight reins on the defense budget the socalled "new look" this rationale was soon to be summarized in the "bigger bang for the buck" slogan. A number of concomitant, if not alternative, causes for the development and deployment of those weapons can nonetheless be found: the U.S. Army desire to break the Air force monopoly on atomic arms; the debate on the "super" thermonuclear bomb which led scientists like Robert Oppenheimer to advocate the development of battlefield nuclear weapons as an alternative to the H bomb to cite only a few.

Although "In some respects, the history of battlefield nuclear weapons is a history of weapons without doctrine," the biggerbangforthebuck rationale easily held as long as the Soviets could not respond in kind against NATO nuclear massive retaliation. When that changed, also the allied doctrine changed from "Massive Retaliation" to "Flexible Response", officially adopted in December 1967.

This doctrine, which is still in force, calls for a mix of conventional, theater nuclear and strategic nuclear weapons. According to the Alliance's official description of its own

doctrine: "The purpose of this balance of forces...is to permit a flexible range of response combining two main capabilities: to meet any aggression at the level judged to be appropriate to defeat the attack, and to be prepared to escalate the level deliberately, maintaining firm political control, if defense at the level first selected is not effective."

With Flexible Response TNW retained their central role. Being no longer riskfree to escalate to the point of massive nuclear retaliation, and still feeling insecure about its conventional capabilities, NATO sought in TNW those margins of superiority needed for the credibility of its deterrent posture. The prospect of escalation raised in the doctrine directly regards TNW. When NATO would consider its conventional defenses ineffective and would resort to nuclear weapons is deliberately left unclear. This ambiguity is thought to enhance deterrence.

When Flexible Response was adopted, though, "a degree of ambiguity was also necessary in order to allow the American and European allies sufficient scope to interpret the strategy in accordance with their preoccupations and perspectives." Again, such 'internal' ambiguity revolves around the role of TNW: "[for] the Europeans...the threat to use TNW represented the best way of 'coupling' the U.S. strategic deterrent to the defense of Europe,

and [for] the Americans...it offered the best hope of preventing a major land battle in Europe from escalating to an allout strategic exchange."

It is in this context that the role of theater nuclear weapons in the NATO doctrine should be assessed. It is indeed a pivotal role as testified, among other things, by the threefold growth of TNW deployed in Europe in the years between the first discussion on (1961) and the final adoption of Flexible Response. This arsenal, however, was subsequently matched by a no less impressive Soviet growth in the same category of weapons. It is a fact of life that NATO lost whatever margin of superiority may have supported its capability, if not its willingness, to escalate. And it is not by chance, perhaps, that criticism of Flexible Response became stronger and stronger as time went by.

As things stand, however, ambiguity is the real glue that holds together the doctrine and the TNW role in it. Thanks to ambiguity, in fact, those weapons are supposed to do one thing and its contrary: to make escalation possible and to halt escalation, to reassure the Europeans that the Americans and the Soviets will not be able to limit a nuclear exchange in Europe and, at the same time, to reassure the Americans that a nuclear use in Europe need not escalate to an intercontinental level.

TNW are still supposed in NATO to compensate for conventional deficiencies and to deter a Soviet theater nuclear first use yet on both sides of the Atlantic this argument

coexists with a quite different one, namely that NATO will always need TNW for extended deterrence, no matter what size and shape the Soviet conventional and nuclear arsenals have.

The former argument can be called nuclear relativism, since it seems to imply that once there be a satisfactory (from NATO's point of view) eastwest conventional balance and no Soviet TNW, the Alliance can rid itself of its own TNW. The latter argument can be called instead nuclear fundamentalism, insofar it simply implies the indefinite retention of TNW, irrespectively of what the other side does or has. Obviously, nuclear relativism can live with some TNW deployments as well as with zero deployments provided the above mentioned conditions about the Soviet threat are met. Therefore it does not fear, and looks forward to, arms control. Nuclear fundamentalism, instead, is even reluctant to engage in negotiations, since these could lead to the zero deployments it fears the most.

Flexible Response can easily accommodate contradictory requirements because, like any other theory or doctrine about deterrence, it is predicated on an nonevent: war, conventional and nuclear as well, between NATO and the Warsaw Pact has never actually occurred and therefore an endless series of speculations can be put forward to explain both what caused its avoidance and what would happen if it did take place. Has the U.S.S.R. ever seriously considered the option to attack NATO in this postwar era? And if the answer is yes, what did deter that country from doing it? The simple fact that it had to confront an alliance of

the wealthiest nations in the world, three of which are nuclear powers, or NATO's supposed ability to control escalation? What would happen if NATO were to cross the nuclear threshold in the midst of a conventional war? Would the Soviets halt their attack, respond with a nuclear use commensurate to NATO's first use or unleash an allout nuclear retaliation? The answers are clearly a matter of guessing.

Much less a matter of speculation, though, is what would happen in case of a nuclear exchange in Europe protracted beyond the point of singledigit explosions. First, such an event would make "maintaining firm political control" on escalation an explicit requirement of Flexible Response as we have seen all but impossible. Second, the amount of damage that would ensue can be hardly called limited. As an aide to former secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara has written: "Studies and war games done in the 1960s showed repeatedly that even under the most favorable assumptions about restraint and limitations in yields and targets, between 2 and 20 million Europeans would be killed in a limited tactical nuclear war, with widespread damage to the economy of the affected area and a high risk of 100 million deaths if the war escalated to attacks on cities." It is against this backdrop of conflicting rationales, unanswerable questions, lingering doubts and appalling certitudes that NATO has deployed TNW in Eur

ope for more than thirty years. And it is against this same backdrop that the debate on the future role of TNW in the Alliance has recently revived.

2. Some background on the hardware

In 1960, at the end of the Eisenhower administration, there were approximately 2,500 U.S. TNW deployed in Europe. In 1968 they peaked at about 7,200, to remain at that level till 1979. This number does not include warheads onboard U.S. vessels and U.S. strategic systems assigned to NATO command Polaris nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) were committed to the Alliance at the very beginning of the Kennedy Administration.

In 1979 a process of phased reductions started, when in conjunction with the Intermediaterange Nuclear Force (INF; range 1,0005,500 km) modernization, NATO decided to withdraw 1,000 nuclear warheads, plus 572 others on a onebyone basis with the deployment of Ground Launched Cruise Missiles (GLCM) and Pershing 2s. Then in October 1983, at a meeting of the Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) in Montebello, Canada, the Alliance decided to withdraw a further 1,400 warheads from Europe and to modernize the rest of the TNW stockpile. Detailed plans for both were left to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) to define. At the March 1985 NPG meeting in Luxembourg, SACEUR Gen. Bernard W. Rogers presented the resulting Nuclear Weapons Requirement Study (NWRS85). By the end of the following year, various weapons had been pulled back to implement NWRS85. They were Honest John surfacetosurface missiles, Atomic Demolition Munitions (ADM) and the warheads for the NikeHercules surfacetoair missiles.

Another important development is the "Treaty between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the elimination of their intermediaterange and shorterrange missiles" (the treaty on the socalled double zero), signed in Washington, December 8, 1987 and subsequently ratified. To be implemented in three years, it will lead to the destruction of 120 Pershing 2 and 309 GLCM deployed in Europe at the time of the signing. In conjunction with the treaty, the government of the F.R.G. has pledged to phase out, and seek no replacement of, its 72 Pershing 1A missiles (these are equipped

with U.S. nuclear warheads,) once the two superpowers have implemented the double zero.

Table 1 represents the current composition of the U.S. stockpile of TNW in Europe.

Table 1: U.S. Theater Nuclear Weapons in Europe (1989)

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U.S. use NATO use Total

8inch AP 500 430 930

155mm AP 600 140 740

Aerial Bombs 1,400 320 1,720

Lance Missiles 320 370 690

TOTAL 2,820 1,260 4,080

AP: Artillery Projectiles.

Source: The Arms Control Association, Fact Sheet, January 1989.

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To complete the picture, however, one must not forget that the U.S. can bring thousands of other nuclear systems to bear on the European theater. They range from the Poseidon Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM) warheads assigned to SACEUR, to artillery shells and nuclear warheads for the Lance missile stored in nonEuropean locations and comprise bombs aboard

aircraft carriers, aerial and depth bombs and Sea Launched Cruise Missiles (SLCM).

The modernization plan included in SACEUR's NWRS85, however, affected all the three categories of NATO TNW: artillery rounds, missiles and aerial weapons.

Artillery rounds. Both the W33 8inch (203 mm) and the W48 155 mm atomic projectiles are old and have outdated safety and control mechanisms. Their successors are the W79 (yield 0.52.5 kt) and the W82 (yield up to 2 kt) respectively. They have, in addition to longer range, an Enhanced Radiation (ER) capability and as such are not deployable in Europe, given the open and widespread opposition to the neutron bomb in that continent. The U.S. Congress repeatedly turned down early Reagan Administration requests to fund the production of nonneutron versions of the new shells. Then in 1984 funds were released, but with the following conditions attached: a production ceiling of 925 for

both the W79 and the W82 at a total cost of no more than $1.2 billion; no additional production of 203 mm ER warheads beyond the 325 already built and stored in the U.S. This meant in practice that no more than 600 fission yield 8inch and 155 mm rounds could be produced, whose mix was left to SACEUR to decide. Apparently preference is now given to the 155 mm W82 shell; 155 mm howitzers are more numerous in NATO and this would enhance the potential for nuclear dispersal and complicate the work of Soviet targeteers. Moreover, the U.S. Army plans to retire its 203 mm howitzers in the next decade. Thus, only 200 fission yield W79 have been built and deployed in Europe. The W82 will enter production in early 1990; such production will be limited to about 400 rounds, unless Congress agrees to lift the restrictions mentioned above. The Pentagon has been indeed asking for the removal of the 925 ceiling, including in the current FY DOD Annual Report to the Congress. Now that the weapon is entering production, an inte

nsification of the effort is to be expected in the coming years.

Missiles. In the category of weapons not affected by the treaty on double zero (landbased, surfacetosurface missiles with range up to 500 km) NATO currently deploys a system called Lance. First introduced in 1972, the Lance has a range of 115 km and a

yield of up to 100 kt. There are 95 Lance launchers in Europe. The number of Lance missiles is not known, but it is plausible that there be at least as many missiles as nuclear warheads thus about 700. Military planners in NATO believe that this system will need a replacement by the midnineties. Meanwhile a Service Life Extension Program, started in 1986, is keeping the Lance updated by replacing components of the guidance and warhead sections. Presumably, by just doing that, the missile can be kept operational for many years to come even though it will not be, by 1990 standards, a stateoftheart system. Search for a Follow On To Lance (FOTL) started early in this decade. The leading candidate was the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACAMS), a conventional weapon which will have a range about double that of the Lance and is scheduled for deployment in the next couple of years. From a costeffectiveness point of view the choice made sense because only the nuclear warhead had to be designed from scratch, being

already under development both the missile and the launcher the latter will be the Multiple Launched Rocket System (MLRS), codeveloped with a number of European allies and therefore likely to be available in Europe in hundreds (almost

one thousand) of units in the near future. In 1985, however, Congress barred the development of a nuclear ATACAMS. In the following years, the Pentagon tried in vain to remove this restriction. In 1988 a study of the military utility and cost of an ATACAMS nuclear warhead was finally authorized. But the attitude in Congress remained cold: in FY 1989, only half of the $15 million authorized for studies on FOTL were actually appropriated. Now, however, the DOD has decided to stop pressing for a nuclear ATACAMS and to seek funds for a new missile which will nonetheless use the MLRS launcher. It is intended to have a range longer than ATACAMS', presumably near to the treaty lower limit of 500 km. The Bush Administration request for FOTL is $32.9 million for FY 1990 and 128.7 million for FY 1991.

Aerial weapons. Modernization of gravity nuclear bombs for tactical aircraft has been going on for some years without raising particular concern either in the U.S. or in Europe. A new model, dubbed B61 (yield 100500 kt), is replacing the older B28, B43 and B57. Whether this process is leading to an increase or a decrease in the number of weapons deployed is unclear. Since bombs have never been mentioned either way, the general assumption, by default, is that their overall number is likely to remain approximately the same. Some nuclear bombs, however, might be withdrawn if a Tactical Standoff Missile (TASM) is developed and eventually deployed. Such a system is intended to increase aircraft survivability by allowing them to avoid flying all the way to the target. As TASM, the U.S. Air Force has chosen the Short Range Attack Missile II (SRAM II), currently under development for the B1 and B2 strategic bombers and whose range should be of about 250 km. $173.1 million have been requested for TASM research and d

evelopment in FY 1990 and 1991.

Finally, at the April 1989 NPG meeting in Brussels, SACEUR Gen. John R. Galvin presented the "Nuclear Weapons Requirement Study

19911998." Additional cuts in nuclear artillery rounds and bombs are projected over the next ten years if NATO agrees to the modernization steps outlined above. Reportedly, NATO's nuclear arsenal would thereby be reduced to about 3,000 warheads.

3. The preGorbachev debate on NATO nuclear modernization

In October 1983, when the Montebello NPG meeting took place, a number of European governments (the British, the German and the Italian in particular) were spending a considerable amount of political capital to counter widespread nuclear fears in their public opinions as the date for the deployment of Pershing 2 and GLCM approached.

U.S.U.S.S.R. arms control talks were getting nowhere: indeed between November and December, as the first NATO missiles were deployed, the Soviets walked out from the INF and START talks in Geneva and refused to set a date for the resumption of the MBFR talks in Vienna. It is easy, then, to interpret the Montebello decision to withdraw 1,400 nuclear warheads as an attempt to allay rampant nuclear anxieties in Europe.

In that context it is also obvious that the modernization side of the decision was to be played down: TNW had been routinely modernized in the past without much publicity and the

NATO defense ministers had reasons to hope that this time could be the same. Moreover, specific modernization steps were left to SACEUR to decide; this would take time (almost two years, as it turned out) and allow the political heat to cool down.

With the European allies fulfilling their obligations to deploy INF on schedule, though, the ball went back to the U.S. court. This was true for arms control and for TNW modernization as well: it is the U.S. Administration that negotiates with the Soviets and it is the U.S. Congress that ultimately authorizes spending and appropriates money for new weapons programs.

On both accounts, however, it is the Congress that will end up playing the leading role. The 1982 byelections had highlighted broad support for the nuclear freeze movement and, more generally, a strong mistrust of the Reagan Administration's handling of arms control on the part of the public. The events of the following year with the INF deployment and the Soviet walk out had only reinforced this attitude of fear and mistrust.

To break the impasse, the beginning of 1983 sees prominent members of the Congress negotiating with the Administration a new U.S. proposal at the START talks. The result is the builddown approach an approach that will not go far on the Geneva bargaining table but that deserves to be recalled for its unprecedented institutional origin. It would seem, thus, that the congressional restrictions mentioned above on nuclear artillery and shortrange missiles (decided in 1984 and 1985 respectively), at least partly reflect the prevailing mood of the time. That is to say the need to rein in an Administration widely perceived as nuclear happy.

Another reason that helps explain those restrictions has to do with the concept of nuclear threshold in Europe. Debate on this concept was triggered in NATO in the Summer of 1982 by an article written by four prominent Americans advocating a nuclear nofirstuse posture for the Alliance. In the end the proposal was basically rejected, but a broad consensus emerged for the need to raise the nuclear threshold and moving toward a noearlyfirstuse posture. The vehicle for such a move went by the name of conventionalization. ATACAMS, for example, had originally been sold to Congress as one of those socalled smart weapons (in this case the DOD concept of "assault breaker") having a lethality comparable to nuclear weapons and therefore being able to substitute them and raise the nuclear threshold. Thus, it is hardly surprising that Congress rejected the idea of making nuclear one of the weapons at the core of the whole conventionalization effort. A further important element of the congressional attitude, then

as now, can be found in the lessons learned with the neutron bomb debate of the late seventies and the ongoing problems associated with the 1979 NATO double track decision on INF.

In the former case the U.S. had developed and produced weapons specifically intended to be deployed in Europe, only to end up keeping them in the U.S. the allied governments simply could not overcome the public antipathy toward the ER warheads. The INF case was not very different: these weapons were supposed to allay european fears about the coupling of NATO defense with the American central strategic systems; and yet they had triggered in Europe mass demonstrations often tinged with antiAmericanism. Pershing 2 and GLCM could in the end be deployed only by emphasizing the second track arms control and pointing to the Soviet unwillingness to give up its numerical advantage in this category of weapons.

To sum up, a pattern seemed to have emerged by the mideighties: the U.S. Congress was willing to fund only a minimum amount of new TNW which was compatible with the trend toward conventionalization and which would not cause second thoughts in the European governments that eventually had to deploy them.

Although that pattern is basically still there, the advent of Mikhail S. Gorbachev to the Kremlin leadership changed all the other terms of the debate.

4. The Gorbachev revolution in arms control and EastWest relations

The new attitude in Moscow does not take long to manifest itself. In July 1985, only four months after the election of Gorbachev as the new secretary general, the U.S.S.R. declares a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing that will last 18 months. In January 1986, Moscow unveils a plan that calls for complete and general nuclear disarmament by the year 2000.

More importantly, all the major Soviet objections to the U.S. proposal of a zero solution for INF progressively fall: stringent verification measures are accepted, together with no compensation for the French and British nuclear arsenals and the inclusion of the SS20s deployed in Asia. At the November (?) 1986 Reykjavik summit meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev, the INF treaty is practically sealed and only the American refusal to accept limits on the SDI stands in the way of an agreement in principle to dismantle all nuclear weapons.

In 1987 Moscow raises the ante of the Euromissiles bargaining by proposing a second zero for the shorterrange systems (range between 500 and 1,000 km) this will eventually be incorporated in the Treaty signed in Washington at the end of the year. Meanwhile, major differences are solved toward an accord on strategic arms whose stated goal is to cut in half the superpowers' arsenals; progress is made in the talks on chemical weapons at the Geneva Conference on Disarmament and the same is true for the Vienna round of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

In 1987 and 1988 a great deal of confidence is built by breaking a long standing pattern of secrecy and mistrust: western observers tour Soviet nuclear testing site, chemical plants and depots, a controversial radar under construction in Krasnojarsk, Siberia, and watch Soviet military maneuvers.

The western military concern par exellence the conventional balance in Europe is initially tackled by the Warsaw Pact with a spate of proposals accepting in principle the idea of dismantling surprise attack capabilities and calling for military forces built around such concepts as "reasonable sufficiency" and "defensive defense". Then, in a speech at the U.S. in December 1988, Gorbachev announces the unilateral withdrawal of six Soviet divisions from Eastern Europe, 5,000 tanks, 50,000 troops. As it turns out the move is accompanied by a general restructuring of the remaining divisions toward less tankintensive, attackequipped units. The Warsaw Pact allies follow suit with similar measures that begin to be implemented at the presence of western reporters in the first months of 1989. Finally, at the opening of the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) talks in March 1989, the Soviet foreign minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze tables a proposal that is generally regarded as not too distant from that of NA

TO and, if anything, more far reaching and imaginative.

At a more general political level, the latitude and scope of the change are no less impressive: the U.S.S.R. willingly cooperates with the west on almost the whole array of regional problems; Soviet troops are withdrawn from Afghanistan; a settlement is reached in Angola and Namibia; the Sovietbacked Vietnamese announces their pull back from Cambodia by September 1989; military aid from Moscow to Managua is discontinued.

In the Soviet Union itself, elections are held and party candidates are rejected in favor of longtime dissidents like Sakharov or political mavericks as the Moscow party chief Boris Yeltsin. In Poland, Solidarity is legalized as well as the Catholic Church, paving the way to general political elections and the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Holy See. Hungary also moves toward elections, dismantles border fortifications with Austria, carries on its economic reforms and freely discusses such concepts as "Finlandization of eastern Europe." Clearly something has happened, something that radically alters the perception of the threat in Europe certainly, but also in the U.S. It is apparent that the terms of the transatlantic debate on western security are no longer the same.

5. The legacy of the INF Treaty

The issue that affected the most the current NATO debate on TNW modernization is clearly the INF treaty and its making. The zero solution that was the American negotiating position from the beginning (November 1981) to the end (December 1987) had been originally voiced within the Social Democratic Party in Germany in 1980. It came to be adopted by a conservative U.S. Administration only because it had the virtues of being at the same time unacceptable to the Soviets, easy to understand and capable of muting leftist, prodisarmament criticism. In essence it was a public relations masterpiece for Ronald Reagan and a victory for those figures within the American government who were opposed in principle to an arms control agreement with the Soviet Union. The architect of this subtle bluff was Richard Perle, then

Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy. The story of how he succeeded in winning over the objections of Richard Burt, then Assistant Secretary of State for PoliticoMilitary Affairs, is well documented in a book written by Time magazine diplomatic correspondent Strobe Talbott.

The turf battles between Perle and Burt typify something more than the gap between those who oppose arms control per se and those who do not. They epitomize, in fact, a difference in attitude in the U.S. between extreme conservatives, a la Perle, who simply do not attach great importance to TNW; and moderate conservatives, a la Burt, who sympathize with the once mainstream European view of TNW as essential for coupling and extended deterrence. The European governments that implemented the INF deployment were in fact moderate: their preferred outcome for the INF talks was an agreement that would have left some Pershing 2 and GLCM in place. Such an agreement, in their view, would have been consistent with the coupling rationale and, at the same time, would have weakened the antinuclear movement. These governments were highly disappointed when Paul Nitze's "walk in

the woods" scheme was rejected by both Washington and Moscow and kept pressuring the Americans to come out with a more flexible approach than the zero solution.

But the Americans did not budge and stuck to their bluff. A bluff that as noted earlier was later called by Gorbachev.

After the ReaganGorbachev Reykjavik summit the prevailing attitude in the European capitals is consternation: here it is an American president who is almost negotiating the liquidation of nuclear deterrence and who, over their objections, has substantially agreed to the complete removal of the Euromissiles.

At the beginning of 1987 there is a last desperate attempt in NATO to avoid the zero solution. It takes the usual form of pointing at Soviet numerical superiority in adjacent categories of weapons. The zero solution, it is said, it is no good because it leaves a large Soviet numerical superiority on shorterrange INF untouched. But the attempt backfires: the Soviets propose a second zero for those systems.

At that point NATO cannot but accept both zeros.

Perceptions about what this means for the Alliance, however, vary markedly according to the various national perspectives.

In London first, but then also in Washington, there is the realization that the process of zeroing TNW out can go on indefinitely, leading to the demise of Flexible Response and to the denuclearization of Europe. Paris, fearing for its independent nuclear arsenal, is even more vocal in raising the specter of a denuclearized Europe a longterm objective of the Soviets, it is argued, who could then take full advantage of their conventional superiority.

6. Developments in West Germany

The view in Bonn is different. The German government is no less concerned about the role of extended deterrence but has to come to terms with the fact that several landbased steps of the escalation ladder are gone. Left instead are those systems (shortrange missiles and nuclear artillery) which, if ever used, would explode in West and East Germany. In other words, Bonn is not going to welcome the idea that the nuclear disarmament buck

has to stop at 500 km. At this point the CDUCSU conservatives gradually join the ranks with the opposition SPD in advocating further arms control for the remaining TNW. This trend is only reinforced by subsequent Soviet initiatives in the conventional realm: the prospect of attaining some measure of conventional parity between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in the nottoodistant future can only strengthen, in fact, the appeal to west Germans of negotiations on Shortrange Nuclear Forces (SNF; range 0500 km).

As a matter of political realism any party in the F.R.G. has now to take into account that poll after poll shows that the German public opinion strongly dislikes nuclear weapons and see with favor Gorbachev's initiatives. On top of that also comes a widespread sense of weariness of 40 years of heavy military burdens, signaled by a growing call to limit NATO land and air exercises.

Outside the military sphere, on the other hand, Bonn reacts to what has been called here "the Gorbachev revolution" by increasing the pace and scope of its Ostpolitik, in the economic, cultural and human fields. It is an effort that outdistances by far those of the other European capitals. To realize this, it

takes only to look at the economic and political capital that the government in Bonn is ready to invest to allow ethnic Germans from eastern countries and the U.S.S.R. (they are more than 3 million, not to mention the 18 million leaving in east Germany) to settle in, or to visit, the F.R.G.: economic capital in the form of billions of deutche marks of credits and political capital in the form of a resurgent xenophobic extreme right that has the potential to draw votes from the CDUCSU electoral base.

The simple fact that West Germany is the European country with the highest stakes in an easing of eastwest tensions is evidently more important here than any exercise in political guessing about intentions; i.e. whether the new Ostpolitik is in essence a drive toward German reunification or not.

Finally, there is also what has been called a new "German assertiveness" or the end of Bonn's traditional "deferential stand" toward the U.S. A factor that can best be read as the translation in political terms of the country's economic growth to worldwide status.

7. The emergence of the NATO rift on nuclear modernization

By mid87 the negotiating teams in Geneva are busy working out the final details on the treaty on double zero. Since it is

apparent to any observer that the momentum toward the signing of the treaty is at this point unstoppable, NATO starts debating the agenda for future armscontrol. The idea of setting priorities what forum should have precedence on the others is in itself an attempt to prevent SNF negotiations or a third zero, i.e. the elimination on both sides of the remaining landbased surface to surface missiles. Logic would instead suggest to proceed wherever the best opportunities are.

While this is in fact the stance taken by the German government, the British and the French argue forcefully for the postponement of any negotiations on SNF and for a firm commitment to modernize. When the allied foreign ministers meet in Reykjavik in June 1987, their final communique goes to great length to accommodate the competing views. It says, in fact, that "...an appropriate mix of adequate and effective nuclear and conventional forces...will continue to be kept up to date where necessary...the comprehensive concept for arms control and disarmament includes...in conjunction with the establishment of a conventional balance and the global elimination of chemical weapons, tangible and verifiable reductions of American and Soviet land based nuclear missile systems of shorter range, leading to equal ceilings." The role of nuclear weapons is reaffirmed; though what may be their "appropriate mix" with conventional ones remains undefined. "Keeping up to date" (with the further caveat "where necessary

") TNW may mean substituting new for old systems as well as keeping the old ones serviceable like the SLEP for the Lance. The term "in conjunction with" may be read as a call for a postponement of SNF negotiations after those on chemical and conventional arms, as well as a pledge to hold various talks in parallel. Finally, "equal ceilings" may mean any number of SNF, including zero.

To sum up, the differences in approach are not really resolved but only papered over. In order to fix them, the Alliance undertakes the task of defining a "comprehensive concept" in which, it is hoped, arms control and modernization can coexist.

The idea of a NATO Gesamkonzept is German and its study will take almost two years. Throughout this period the major actors will stand by their respective positions on the issue; for example, the final communique of the March 1988 Brussels North Atlantic Council simply restates the compromise reached in Reykjavik the year before, using the same words.

In the fall of 1987, though, an important change takes place in the U.S. administration: both the Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, and his Assistant for International Security Policy, Richard Perle, leave the Pentagon. They are replaced by Frank Carlucci and Ronald Lehman respectively. Lehman in particular seems to be very sympathetic with the FrancoBritish view SNF modernization: in February 1988 he unsuccessfully strives to win congressional approval for the Lance followon. During a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, to a question that defined "very ambiguous" the German commitment to modernize, he answers in the following terms: "Let me say that I have no doubts in my own mind that Chancellor [Helmut] Kohl or even his successors...will do exactly what is right...Chancellor Kohl said...that we must have Flexible Response, that we must have U.S. nuclear forces in Europe, that we cannot accept the third zero. And he has made clear that a failure to modernize would in essence be

a unilateral third zero."

Obviously, not all the Senators are persuaded by Lehman's characterization of the German view. Senator J. James Exon (D Nebraska), for example, replies that a number of European experts had been "...telling me that it would be extremely difficult and could cause the fall of the Kohl government if he would agree to the deployment of the shortrange weapons, given the nuclearfree concept that seems to be growing in Europe."

On SNF negotiations Lehman has no doubts: "We are opposed to that...We have continued to tell [the Germans] that we do not

think it is a good idea and we have no interest in getting into such negotiations."

What is emerging, however, is clearly a nowin situation. The U.S. administration is unable to get either the congressional goahead for the FOTL development or the German goahead for its eventual deployment. They are dependent on one another, and the lack of one forecloses the attainment of the other. SNF negotiations are of course seen by the Pentagon as anathema because they would reinforce both the German attitude to at least postpone a modernization commitment and the congressional reluctance to fund the new weapon. On this latter regard, note that given the budgetary restraints that even the new Secretary Carlucci is championing, a $1.5 billion investment in new systems that may soon be scrapped as a result of an INFlike agreement is not going to be seen with favor by Congressmen of both parties. It is no surprise, therefore, that the legislative branch will end up appropriating a very small amount ($7.5 million, half of the original authorization) for mere feasibility studies on the FOTL.

Lehman's view are probably typical of what has been called above the moderateconservative approach to TNW and extended deterrence. In other words, he is convinced that the mainstream view in Europe is against SNF arms control and promodernization and that Kohl belongs to the mainstream. The Chancellor's only problem, though, is that he cannot say so publicly. Thus, the

U.S. should set in motion the modernization process on its own; German consensus will follow as soon as the domestic political situation will allow it. This diagnosis may be true; but the problem is that the political situation in the F.R.G. will not allow Kohl to take the promodernization stance he may perhaps favor in his heart. Soviet initiatives and the political mood in Germany will simply render the modernization decision tantamount to political suicide. And, as it should be expected, "Chancellor Kohl obviously decided that the Lance was not worth political suicide."

That the Congress was determined to proceed with great caution on TNW modernization was plain enough already in 19841985. Less than three months before the signing of the INF treaty, however, one of the leading lawmakers on security had made that stance even clearer. In a speech called The world after zero INF, Les Aspin, Chairman of the House Armed forces Committee, had dealt with both negotiations and modernization of TNW.

On the former he said: "In my view, further theater nuclear arms control at this time is not a good idea." But he was also critical of the FOTL: "This new missile would probably be billed as a modernized replacement for the aging Lance, although it would most likely turn out to be a system with a different range,

accuracy, launcher and nuclear warhead in effect, a completely new missile." More importantly, he was perfectly aware of the political problems associated with modernization: "If we could implement these deployments with some certainty, the nuclear modernization approach would be useful. But what would help us with the nuclear linkage problem such as a followon to the Lance isn't doable politically." After having advocated a lowkey approach to improve the NATO TNW posture (basically better dispersal arrangements for nuclearcapable aircraft and artillery) he summed up his views in the following terms: "...I'm skeptical of spending too much effort on either more arms control or more modernization for theater nuclear forces. While they have their benefits, the likely costs of either approach strongly suggest that if we can find another way, then we should."

To the extent that Aspin's words can be taken as representative of the majority view in the Congress, it is notable that the legislative branch had: first, foreseen, and understood the terms of, the emergence of a contentious issue in NATO that was going to pit some allies against others; second, advocated a powerbroker role for the U.S. by attempting to accommodate both views, namely a deferral of SNF negotiations (a gesture toward France and Britain) as well as of modernization (a gesture toward the F.R.G.). A lameduck administration had instead decided to side unequivocally with Paris and London.

At the beginning of 1989, the new Bush administration is following on the steps of its predecessor. On January 29, then Defense Secretarydesignate John Tower makes a speech in Munich urging modernization of SNF. The speech takes place in the framework of the annual Wehrkunde conference, a gathering of security experts of both sides of the Atlantic which is the traditional repository of the moderateconservative view on TNW and extended deterrence. Political imperatives, as opposed to the abstract thinking of the strategists, will soon come to the fore, though.

On February 10, the day after Secretary of State James A. Baker III has left Washington for an eightday trip to 14 NATO nations, Chancellor Kohl publicly calls for a delay of any NATO decision to modernize SNF after 19911992. It is not difficult to see Behind the Kohl's move an attempt to approach German general elections (scheduled for December 1990) without the burden of a certain electoral loser the CDUCSU is already trailing behind the opposition in opinion polls.

The U.S. administration is clearly taken aback and presented with a tough dilemma. On the one hand it is clear that whatever hope to modernize SNF would dim, should a coalition of Social

Democrats and Greens go to power in West Germany these parties have been adamant in calling for nuclear disarmament in Europe throughout the eighties. Thus, the U.S. has a stake in helping Kohl to win a reelection. On the other hand, in his talk with British foreign Minister Geoffrey Howe during the same trip, Baker reportedly says that "...the modernization issue among the allies needs to be `cleared up' in order to persuade Congress to provide the money for the [FOTL] weapons."

On his way back from Europe, however, Baker seems inclined to find a solution in a repetion of the 1979 NATO dualtrack approach for INF: a commitment to modernize SNF should be accompanied by "an arms control and disarmament component", he is quoted as saying. This approach will soon become a dead letter in the face of the clear German unwillingness to take any commitment on FOTL before 1992.

Moreover, Bonn is soon asking for EastWest talks to cut SNF. "We demand that negotiations on these systems be started without delay in accordance with the [NATO 1987] Reykjavik decisions," says the German Foreign Minister HansDietrich Genscher on March 2 at a U.N. conference on disarmament in Geneva. Genscher is well known to be the leading advocate of

such negotiations within the coalition in power in Bonn. The timing and the forum chosen for his declaration and the fact that he will not be subsequently rectified by the Prime Minister himself, make nevertheless clear that Genscher has spoken on behalf of his government.

The following month, when the new Secretary of Defense Richard B. Cheney leaves washington to take part to a NATO NPG meeting in Brussels, he speaks "...strongly for modernizing the alliance's shortrange nuclear weapons and against EastWest talks on reducing them." After the meeting, though, it becomes clear that Bonn has won a delay to 1992 of any modernization decision. On their part, Cheney and his British colleague George Younger reaffirm their opposition to SNF talks. Thus, a compromise seems to have been reached in NATO on the basis of no immediate modernization commitment coupled with no early EastWest negotiations on SNF. An Atlantic controversy over the issue seems to have been defused. Although the meeting's final communique offers no more than the usual, rather vague, pledge to keep nuclear forces "up to date where necessary," Cheney feels "...that I have sufficient expression of interest...so that I can present the case to Congress for us to obtain the funding we need to continue with respe

ct to research and development" on FOTL. Far from being defused, however, the controversy is about to explode. Cheney has hardly gotten back to Washington, that after a cabinet reshuffle Kohl dispatches Genscher and his newly appointed Defense Minister Gerald Stoltemberg to the U.S. capital. The public objective of this April 24 blitzkrieg is to win the Bush administration's approval to early EastWest negotiations on SNF. The American response is an unequivocal, and perhaps angry, no.

The American rebuff does not deter Kohl, however, from going even further. In a major speech on foreign policy before the Bundestag, after having reaffirmed that no NATO decision on modernization needs to be taken before 1992 and his call for early SNF negotiations, he also makes clear that a mandate should be established to reduce nuclear artillery. Furthermore, Kohl states the FOTL development is a "national American decision." It is a coded message to the U.S. Congress which clearly amounts to openly dissociate West Germany from the new weapons's development. It is also precisely the contrary of what the American administration has been trying to sell to the legislative branch.

With only a month to go before a NATO summit, scheduled for May 2930 in Brussels and originally intended mainly as a celebration of the first 40 years of the Alliance, the rift cannot be more open. While Paris avoids to take publicly sides,

all the european continental allies, with the possible exception of the Dutch, support the West Germans. Canada, and of course Britain, share instead the U.S. position on the dispute.

The beginning of May sees a flurry of shuttle diplomacy between Washington and Bonn, but with little result. Ten days before the Brussels Atlantic Council the Bush administration accepts in principle to negotiate on SNF, but with the following conditions attached: they cannot begin until an EastWest accord to cut conventional arms in Europe is reached; SNF reduction resulting from the negotiations will begin after the conventional arms agreement is implemented; a third zero should be explicitly ruled out. Note that then the Administration's estimate about the time it would take to negotiate and implement an agreement at the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) talks in Vienna is five years. Therefore the acceptance in principle of SNF talks, from Bonn's point of view, hardly satisfies Kohl's appeals for "early" negotiations.

On the eve of the NATO summit the rift is still there, when George Bush ably manages to shift the attention elsewhere and to rally the allies behind him. He does that by presenting a new proposal for the CFE talks to his NATO partners these will swiftly endorse it with a sigh of relief. The new proposal is actually the acceptance of two points that the Soviets have long been trying to put on the table, despite the Western refusal to

do so: the inclusion of tactical aircraft and the inclusion of troops among the various categories of conventional power to be cut. Nevertheless, it is the first major arms control overture of the Bush administration. Moreover, it clearly fits the purpose of moving the SNF problem to the sidelines and of providing the show of unity needed to celebrate in harmony NATO's 40th anniversary.

Included in the Bush proposal there is a tentative timeframe: the Alliance will "Seek a [CFE] agreement within six months to a year and accomplish the reductions by 1992 or 1993." Optimistic as it may sound, the statement is clearly intended as a signal to the Germans: SNF talks may begin earlier than previously expected.

More explicit references to the FOTL issue, however, are contained in the "comprehensive concept of arms control and disarmament," made public in the final communique. The U.S. conditions to enter SNF talks mentioned above are endorsed by the Alliance, including the prevention of a third zero. "The U.S. says in fact the document ...is prepared to enter into negotiations to achieve a partial reduction of American and Soviet landbased nuclear missiles forces of shorter range to equal and verifiable levels." On the other hand, the

comprehensive concept accommodates some of the German demands by explicitly postponing a FOTL deployment decision to 1992 and by treating its R&D funding as "a decision for national authorities" whose "value", though, is "recognized" by the "allies concerned."

What seems to be an happy ending, however, cannot dispel all the doubts. The summit is barely over that reportedly, "Some NATO diplomats say they believe that no West German government will accept the deployment of a successor to the Lance...They argue that a `zero solution' for NATO could come about through technological obsolescence, not diplomacy, rendering quibbling over communiques an academic exercise."

On June first these predictions are promptly echoed by Kohl and Genscher's addresses to the Bundestag. Referring to a sentence in the comprehensive concept, inserted at American and British insistence, that said that SNF will be needed in Europe "as far as can be foreseen," the prime minister declares that "Given the general trend of developments today between the East and the West, `foreseeable' can mean a relatively limited period of time." On his part, Genscher underlines another phrase of the same document, the one that states that a FOTL decision will be taken "in the light of the overall security developments." And,

as he points out, the F.R.G. will work "to shape developments so that there will be no compulsion for a followon system."

For the moment, however, the Lance saga is over.

The SNF question has not been debated by the NATO allies in a vacuum. Throughout such debate, in fact, the Soviets and their allies have never slowed the pace of their arms control initiatives. In a letter to Kohl in December 1987, for example, the East German President, Erich Honecker, advocated the removal of nuclear weapons. In January 1988, it is Shevardnadze's turn to call for a third zero. In the following months, however, Moscow somewhat relents its appeals for SNF negotiations, bowing to the Western insistence to exclude TNW from the mandate of the CFE talks.

It must be noted, though, that even the Soviet proposals in the conventional realm inevitably end up having an impact on the SNF question. As pointed out in the first chapter, in fact, nuclear weapons are closely linked to the state of the conventional balance at least in the minds of NATO nuclear relativists. Thus, when the Atlantic controversy on FOTL has become apparent, the Kremlin decides to adopt a twopronged approach, combining offers on both the conventional and the nuclear fields. This is exactly what happens in May 1989, when Baker flies to Moscow with the intention of 'testing' the Soviets on a range of issues outside the arms control sphere. As it turns out, it will be the Soviets to test the Bush administration on arms control: on May 11, Gorbachev hands the Secretary of State a new conventional arms proposal that positively adresses a number of conditions contained in NATO's own opening move at the CFE talks. Furthermore, Gorbachev announces a unilateral cut of Soviet nuclear weapons in

europe. By the end of 1989, he says, the U.S.S.R. will pull out 284 missile warheads, 166 aerial bombs and 50 artillery rounds.

However, the potential impact of the latter move, which is clearly intended to strengthen the hand of those in NATO who oppose SNF modernization, is seriously compromised by the Soviets themselves. The following day, during a visit to Bonn, Shevardnadze threatens to halt the dismantling of the SS23 missiles if NATO proceeds with the followon to the Lance. The threat, if carried out, would amount to no less than violating the INF treaty, and when on May 24 Shevardnadze himself will drop it, it will be too late to refocus the attention on the previous, more conciliatory, gesture of a unilateral TNW

reduction. It must also be noted that such reduction is quickly dismissed by the U.S. administration as an empty gesture. The Soviets, it is said, have 10,000 nuclear warheads in Europe as opposed to NATO's 4,000 and the announced pull back is a mere 5 percent of their stockpile.

Be it the U.S. skepticism, or be it the Soviet diplomatic maladroitness in the circumstance, Moscow's moves on SNF strictly speaking fail to influence substantially the NATO debate on TNW modernization. Much more effective in molding Western opinions seem to be instead the Soviet initiatives in the conventional field. This is going to be even more true in the immediate future, since NATO has now chosen to give priority to the same field.

But as long as Bonn is not going to forget the SNF issue, Moscow will not forget either. After the NATO summit, in fact, Shevardnadze's comments reiterate the Soviet position that SNF

talks be held in parallel with, instead of being dependent on, the CFE ones.

8. Policymaking in Washington

The first remarkable thing about the stance initially taken by the Bush administration on the NATO SNF rift is the extent to which it lacked support within the U.S. itself. Indeed, criticism poured from all sides.

Most prominent among the critics was probably Paul Nitze, the veteran American arms control negotiator who certainly has not a past of softmindedness toward the Soviet Union. Nitze underlined that asking a German commitment to modernize SNF without offering the second track arms control was something unacceptable to "any conceivable German government." He proposed instead to enter SNF talks with the Soviets after having won a German agreement to exclude a third zero and concentrate on a negotiated ceiling of 200300 warheads. The most compelling military reason to do that was, for Nitze, the numerical advantage enjoyed by the Warsaw Pact in shortrange missiles:

some 1,400 launchers as opposed to NATO's 88, according to the estimates quoted by him.

Thus, almost any outcome above zero of the SNF talks would amount to a large Soviet unilateral reduction clearly an outcome in NATO interest from a military point of view. Nitze was also against any temporal linkage with the CFE talks. "If we were able he wrote to achieve agreement on equal levels of shortrange nuclear missiles in Europe at about the level I suggest we aim at, I see no reason why we should deny ourselves the benefit of the onesided Soviet reductions implied by such an outcome until we have achieved a more ambitious (and I believe more timeconsuming) goal of conventional forcereductions."

Criticism, however, ran the whole gamut of the American politicostrategic landscape. Richard Perle, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was not only in favor of negotiations, but also of a third zero for SNF. On the same position was Dennis M. Gormley, vice president of Pacific Sierra Research Corporation, a Pentagon consulting firm. Even Kim R. Holmes, deputy director od defense policy studies at the

proverbially conservative Heritage Foundation favored a delay to 1992 of a decision about deploying FOTL.

Thus, for once at least, the socalled hardliners were advocating the same policy as the more liberal, center or leftof center intellectuals, like Jonathan Dean, arms control consultant for the Union of Concerned Scientists, Jack Mendelsohn, deputy director of the Arms Control Association, or John D. Steinbruner, director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution.

At the beginning of May, a different approach was also urged upon the Administration by the Democratic chairmen of the two congressional committees on Armed Forces, Sam Nunn (Senate) and Les Aspin (House). It is notable that Nunn's proposal was well received by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Crowe, during a Senate hearing. A fact that underlines that even the military were skeptical at that time of the Administration's handling of the SNF question.

The ideas put forward by Nunn and Aspin in that circumstance were almost identical. The important thing, though, is that in practice they were also identical to the approach the

Administration will eventually adopt some three weeks later and that NATO will basically subscribe in its comprehensive concept.

In a fashion similar to the making of the 1983 builddown proposal, congressional leaders took the initiative to break an arms control impasse and in this case also an alliance management impasse filling the political void created by the Administration's inertia. The difference is that this time public negotiations between the two branches of the U.S. government did not take place. But clearly, much of the credit Bush will take after the NATO summit results from congressional suggestions. As already observed in note 46, even Bush's ingenious move of shifting the focus toward conventional arms control basically coincides with the ideas voiced by Les Aspin back in 1987.

Given the policy convergence between the Administration and the congressional leaders on defense, it is reasonable to expect that FOTL Research and Development will be funded in FY 1990. The amount of money involved ($32.9 million) is small compared to a $300 billion Defense budget and the benefit of buying one year time to see how the SNF issue and the CFE talks evolve. Problems may arise in FY 1991, for which the request is substantially higher ($128.7 million) and even more so in FY 1992, when the request will not only be in the several hundred million range, but will also include some money for production items. There is clearly no point, however, in trying to predict now what Congress will decide about the followon to Lance in the spring of 1991; that is without knowing what the outcome of the German elections

will be in the Fall of 1990 and what, if any, the results of two years of CFE negotiations will be.

At this point, two questions are in order, however. First, why the Administration managed the issue in such a way as to end up so domestically let alone internationally isolated? And second, what does this story tell about American perceptions of the issue per se, i.e. TNW and their role in NATO?

Clearly both questions have many answers and it is better to bear in mind that they cannot but be tentative and asystematic.

About the first question, it is probably worthwhile to recall that Bush was elected on a cautious, don'trocktheboat, platform on national security. He made clear that he needed time to define his stance on a host of problems of arms control and EastWest relations. The personnel he first assembled around him set out to work on a policy review, whose making, though, was so slow as to be rapidly superseded by the events themselves.

Thus, one answer can perhaps be found in the interplay of an Administration inclined to caution and slow motion with the fastmoving, hardpressing, initiativeprone international counterparts (Bonn and Moscow) it had to deal with. In other words, the natural tendency to stick to whatever position happened to have been previously defined tended inevitably to prevail within the Administration, no matter what changes might occur in the environment around it. If events keep putting an actor on a defensive, backagainstthewall, posture, a likely reaction is often times sheer irritation. This, in turn, reinforces the inclination to "stand firm", avoiding "budging" and emphasize a measure of selfrighteousness in one's stance.

To a certain degree, this is what happened to the Bush administration. For example, when Gorbachev announced the 500 TNW reduction, Cheney's comment was as follows: "He has got so many ratholes over there in Eastern Europe that 500 is a pittance." White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, on his part, declared that the Soviet commitment to halt arms transfers to Nicaragua was "a public relations gambit," typical of a "drugstore cowboy". (meaning, of course, the Soviet leader.)

Frustration probably rose to even higher levels when, instead of an adversary like Moscow, it was an ally, Bonn, to pressure the U.S. government. There is no doubt that the circumstances helped to anger the Americans. After the NPG meeting in April, in fact, the Bush administration had reasons to believe that the SNF problem was settled on the basis of no modernization decision before 1992 no early negotiations. As recalled above, however, the Germans decided to ask for negotiations, and with a high public profile, right after having banked what appeared to be already a major U.S. concession. "The Germans have not been straight with us an Administration official commented at that time We had an understanding with them on how to deal with this issue...They promised to continue

engaging in a discussion to sort out our differences, and then they turned around and presented us with a fait accompli."

Governments are made of human beings and it would be wrong to discount the role that anger, irritation, or the fear of loosing face, play in even the most "technical" questions of international relations.

The slow start of the Bush administration had another important consequence in terms of the political appointment process. As of May 8, 80 percent of the senior positions in government had yet to be filled with State and Defense having the highest number of vacant posts. In particular the State Department ability to have its opinions heard within the Administration was seriously hampered, since it lacked the secondechelon people that are supposed to act as the trait d'union between the Foreign Service Officers (FSO) and the upper levels of decision making. In addition Secretary Baker seemed from the beginning to be more interested to the work of inner government and to dealing with Congress tasks where his expertise certainly lays than to foreign policy itself where he is a relatively newcomer. It is quite likely that these things had a certain impact on the evolution of the NATO rift: FSO are typically better informed

about political trends in foreign countries and less inclined to risk open disagreement with a major ally like the F.R.G.

It is fair to assume, however, that policy making on SNF was left largely to the National Security Council (NSC), where political appointments did not need Senate confirmation and therefore were more rapidly done. It is within the NSC that the U.S. NATO policy took shape, probably in the context of the NSCcoordinated policy review task force, whose members included people from other agencies and departments. Thus, a look at the international security personnel assembled by the Bush administration may perhaps help to shed some light on its policy choices.

In general, the impression one gets from Bush's appointments confirms the idea that his intention was to position himself more to the center, keeping some distance from the more genuine Reaganauts like Perle. Bush, and most of the people he chose to work with, seem to be highly skeptical, for example of Reagan's professed disdain for nuclear deterrence. An attitude Reagan shared with some of his closest advisors: the same former Secretary of State George Shultz who so hardly worked to win the allies' agreement on the treaty on double zero, left office reportedly convinced that nuclear deterrence will not be the centerpiece of EastWest relations for long.

Bush was probably persuaded that episodes like the ReaganGorbachev Reykjavik summit, the antinuclear deterrence overtones of the cherished (by Reagan) Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI),

and the making of the INF treaty had hurt the fabric of the Atlantic Alliance, leaving the European partners wondering about the credibility of the U.S. nuclear commitment. So he thought it was better to move toward what he perceived to be the mainstream.

The change did not go unnoticed. Paul Nitze reportedly "...said the Bush administration was positioning itself to the right of the Reagan administration in its policy toward Moscow to demonstrate that it `is not really a followon to the Reagan administration'...many of the appointments made by the Bush administration had links to former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, who was critical of the arms control approach taken by Mr. Shultz...`Personnelwise, it was a black mark on one's record to have worked closely with the Reagan administration.'"

It is also noticeable that those who managed to make the transition from Reagan to Bush were the most moderate figures of the former administration. People like Richard Burt, headdesignate of the U.S. START delegation, or Robert Blackwill, a Harvard professor and former U.S. negotiator, who was put in charge of European affairs at the NSC. In particular, reading now what Blackwill wrote in the Summer of 1988 makes one think that his role in the initial U.S. insistence to get a German commitment for the FOTL must have been substantial. He so concluded, in fact, a long essay dedicated to the prospects of

conventional negotiations: "...the Alliance's most urgent task is not reducing longstanding Soviet conventional advantages visavis NATO, important though that goal undoubtedly is. Rather, it is modernising the aging US nuclear weapons in Europe in a way that ensures the vitality of extended deterrence and Flexible Response until the end of the century and beyond."

This brief overview of the Bush administration's personnel in charge of international security leads us, however, back to the second question put forward above: what does the modernization controversy tell about American perceptions on TNW and extended deterrence?

Part of the answer must be sought in the fact that TNW do not have a large constituency in the U.S. As we have seen, both the right and the left, the Reaganauts and the moderate liberals, are not particularly fond of these weapons, nor believe that they are really essential to extended deterrence. Obviously, the two camps have different motives and priorities: the extreme conservatives see TNW as an expendable bargaining chip to get deeper Soviet reductions in exchange, whereas moderate liberals are more concerned with TNW potential instability in a crisis. But the dislike toward TNW they do share. As for the Armed Services, it is reasonable to expect that TNW are perceived as having only a marginal military significance although it is difficult to have a general on record saying that he can do without a single piece of hardware. Their priorities, however, clearly lay elsewhere: aircraft and missiles for the Air Force, tanks and troops for the Army, with the Navy having little to do with TNW at al

l.

This leaves a very narrow band of the U.S. political spectrum that believes TNW have really an important role to play. True, this narrow band happens, by all accounts, to be in power: the Administration, the congressional leaders on defense matters. In perspective, though, this is far less important than the fact that the constituency that used to make their advocacy of TNW politically sensible has disappeared.

The constituency I am talking about is the Federal Republic of Germany.

The chief rationale to extend deterrence via TNW has always been to address German concerns. They used to be called European concerns, but in reality they were almost exclusively German: they were not British or French they have their own nuclear weapons nor the concern of Italians who have always had rather different concerns nor the concerns of countries like Denmark, Norway or Spain who don't even allow the U.S. to deploy TNW on their territory. But the moment the Germans overcome their angst about extended deterrence (or replace it with a more logical angst about nuclear war) TNW become what they

have always been: weapons of marginal significance, both for deterrence and for warfighting purposes.

History of TNW is replete with symbolism. TNW have indeed always been largely a symbolic matter. All the targets they can possibly cover could be covered as well by the tens of thousand U.S. nuclear weapons based in the U.S. or onboard U.S. vessels around the world. The argument that for a U.S. president would make any difference where the weapon with which he decides to cross the nuclear threshold is based that argument has always been hardly credible. Only the fact that, as I made clear in the first chapter, this is the realm of the wildest intellectual speculations helped to keep it alive.

So, the real role of TNW was that they symbolized to the Germans the American nuclear guarantee. This is the reason why they had to be landbased. SLCM, which are identical to GLCM, would have been in European waters in any event. But GLCM had to be deployed for politicalsymbolic purposes. Even in this latest NATO rift, all the attention was concentrated on the weapon with the highest symbolic profile, again a landbased missile. Meanwhile, new nuclear aerial bombs are introduced without much fuss.

The real meaning of the SNF controversy, however, is that all the major political forces in West Germany have decided to get out of the symbolic business on TNW and extended deterrence, relying more instead, to cope with the threat, on conventional and nuclear arms control. If this is true, then those Americans who advocate TNW modernization will increasingly have a hard time in sustaining their stance. That also means that the U.S. administration will have to adjust to these new political realities.

Conclusions

This paper has attempted to highlight the following features of the U.S. policy making process on TNW modernization in Europe.

First, an Administration certainly not inclined to bold initiatives and rapid changes in international relations has found itself hardly pressed by the dynamism of its counterparts on the world scene notably Moscow and Bonn. The initial reaction has been anger and irritation. But the events have also shown that the President is capable to change course and mold his policy according to the circumstances. However, it is not clear yet whether this presidency is willing to act at all, as opposed to merely reacting under pressure, in the arms control field.

Second, the Congress played a central policymaking role. It indeed defined the position the President later adopted to solve at least temporarily the NATO controversy. This fact seems also to be consistent with a longerterm trend that sees the

Congress taking the initiative on arms control and security issues at times when the executive is incapable of overcoming its own inertia.

Third, whatever constituency TNW may have in the U.S. seems to be destined to shrink as West Germans grow more and more skeptical toward TNW role in extended deterrence. The American moderate conservative view on TNW has its raison d'etre basically in Bonn's need for these weapons for reassurance purposes. As a strategic sea change takes place in the F.R.G., that view could well be politically untenable on the notsolong run.

As for the future, it seems now likely that Congress will fund Research and Development for the followon to the Lance, although the decision to go ahead with production is dependent on the outcome of the Fall 1990 German elections and on developments at the Vienna CFE talks.

An issue that this paper has not addressed is the one concerning the nuclear aspects of the burdensharing debate. Representative Aspin has, for example, declared that as Europeans refuse to deploy TNW in their territory, a "no nukes no troops" issue will arise in Congress that is to say no American troops to defend Europe without the attendant nuclear weapons.

It is my opinion that this argument is less convincing than it may appear at first glance. "No nukes no troops" makes sense only in the larger context of the burdensharing debate. It is,

in other words, a leverage to have the Europeans spend more for NATO defense. As a leverage, though, it works as long as the Europeans are keenly interested in TNW deployments a fact that is no longer granted as it used to be.

Besides, it would be my contention that it is in the American interest not only to defend Europe at all. But also to limit, to the extent possible, this commitment to conventional roles. Furthermore, any reduction that may result from the CFE talks should help solving the burdensharing debate in the direction of a reduced burden for all.

Closing up, I would like to spend a few more words outside the sphere of the U.S. policy making, and insert the TNW issue in the more familiar to me realm of international security.

I believe it is fair to say that before us we are beginning to see the outline of a new world order in which the U.S.S.R. is much more interested in integrating itself than in acting as an alternative to the freemarket economies.

On this basis, whatever may happen over the long run, chances are rather high that a rough balance of conventional forces may be attained in Europe in the relatively shortterm. Once such a change takes place, it will become even more apparent that the retention of TNW does not serve NATO's interest, and that the Alliance will be better served by negotiating them away. With numerical parity in arms, the West will have in fact a comfortable technological lead that would be put at risk by the

other side's TNW. Paradoxically, these weapons would yet again work as the "great equalizers", but with reversed roles. Europe, however, would still be in the grips of fear of nuclear devastation and the superpowers would still reason in terms of nuclear escalation instead of having a stable conventional balance, backed by minimum strategic nuclear deterrents.

In a European military environment like the one I have just depicted, one has really to be a nuclear fundamentalist to keep seeing great virtues in TNW.

Finally, observers on both sides of the Atlantic should start asking themselves what good does nuclear fundamentalism make to what will soon become one of the most thorny problems of international security, i.e. the proliferation of both nuclear weapons and ballistic missile. I hope it will be soon apparent that treating the mutual elimination of shortrange nuclear missiles as anathema, certainly does not help the Western credibility in persuading others to renounce to theirs.

Interviews

Jonathan Dean, ambassador (ret) and arms control consultant for the Union of Concerned Scientists, Washington, DC.

Jesse James, senior research analyst, the Arms Control Association, Washington, DC.

F. Stephen Larrabee, vice president and director of studies, Institute for East West Security Studies, New York.

Jack Mendelsohn, deputy director, the Arms Control Association, Washington, DC.

Bowman Miller, director, office of analysis for Western Europe and Canada, Department of State.

Clark Murdock, professional staff member, Committee on Armed Services, U.S. House of Representative.

R. Spencer Oliver, chief counsel, Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representative.

Gregory L. Shulte, assistant for TNF policy, office of the assistant secretary for international security policy, Department of Defense.

John D. Steinbruner, director of foreign policy studies, the Brookings Institution, Washington, DC.