Editors' Note

Editors' Note T h e first issue of a new volume provides an opportunity to thank the scholars and analysts who review manuscripts for International Security. Although the editors asssume final responsibility for all decisions, our judgments are informed by the reports of many external referees. We rely greatly on members of the Editorial Board, authors who have been published in International Security, and present and former researchfellows at the Center for Science and International Affairs. We also ask other experts to review manuscripts, and for their kelp we are especially grateful. Readers of International Security who would like to join our list of reviewers should send a brief explanation of their areas of expertise to the managing editor. In our lead article in this issue, Malcolm Chalmers of the University of Bradford and Lutz Unterseher of the European Study Group on Alternative Security Policy argue that the muck-vaunted Soviet superiority in tanks in Central Europe is largely a myth. Their comprehensive study of the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of the tank balance compares global and European NATO and WarsawPact tank inventories and various measures of the fighting power of individual tanks. They conclude that the Pact's numerical superiority has been overstated and that NATO's qualitative advantages in the areas of observation, firepower, mobility, and armor protection are sufficient to create rough parity in combat potential. Eliot Cohen of the Naval War College addresses the larger question of the conventional balance in Europe, a subject that promises to become even more important as the INF treaty is implemented and as NATO and Warsaw Pact negotiators begin to discuss conventional arms control. He argues that many of the more optimistic assessments of the Central European balance-some of which have appeared in these pages-suffer from serious methodologicalflaws. His analysis suggests that comprehensive assessments must consider how alliance politics would affect NATO's ability to mobilize and fight, must treat Western intelligence capabilities as well as Soviet military capabilities and doctrine realistically, and must use data and models more carefully. Cohen concludes that the European balance is not only worse, but also far more complex, than has been suggested by many optimistic analyses. Since the Reagan-Gorbachev summit at Reykjavik, deep cuts in U.S. and Soviet strategic nuclear arsenals have been regarded as increasingly feasible. In a thorough study of the impact of strategic arms reductions to levels of 6,000 or 3,000 warheads, Michael May and George Bing of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and John Steinbruner of the Brookings Institution examine the impact of deep cuts on International Security, Summer 1988(Vol. 13, No. 1) 0 1988by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 3 International Security 23:1 I 4 crisis stability, deterrence requirements, and civilian fatalities. After considering several different configurations of U.S. and Soviet nuclear forces and analyzing potential nuclear exchanges with the aid of a computer model, they conclude that none would much affect civilian fatalities. Fifty percent cuts would leave the United States ample forces to provide for deterrence and other mission requirements. Some configurations of reductions to 3,000 warheads would leaveforces close to the margin for the requirements of deterrence, making survivability more important. Stephen Peter Rosen of the Naval War College argues that peacetime military innovation does not require civilian intervention from outside, but instead can come from within when senior military oficers devise a new theory of victory and then create new promotion pathways to senior rank. He draws these conclusions from the cases of the U.S. Navy‘s development of aircraft carriers, the U.S. Marine Corps‘ development of amphibious assault, and the pre-World War 11 Royal Air Force development of air defense. Rosen suggests that military innovation is a political struggle for control of a military service that can take many years to resolve requiring a long-term institutional approach for successful implementation. This issue also includes a review by Lawrence Freedman of Morton Halperin’s Nuclear Fallacy and Robert McNamara’s Blundering Into Disaster; a review by Robert Keohane of Stephen Walt’s The Origins of Alliances; and an ,exchange of correspondenceon...