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Editors’Note I n our lead article this issue , John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago presents a pessimistic vision of Europe’s future. Mearsheimer contends that Europe has enjoyed peace for the past 45 years for two key reasons: bipolar systems tend to be stable, and the presence of nuclear weapons has induced general caution. If the Soviet Union and the United States withdraw from Europe, he argues, Europe will devolve to multipolarity and a renewed era of wars and major crises may erupt on that continent. Although others believe that European stability will be preserved because economic interdependence causes peace, because democraciesdo not fight one another, or because war is becoming obsolescent among industrialized countries, Mearsheimer suggests that these theories are inapplicableor wrong. He also warns that more European countries, including a united Germany, will seek nuclear arsenals if the superpowers withdraw. If not carefully managed, this trend may create new risks of major crises and wars. The United States is becoming increasingly dependent onforeign suppliers of critical defense materials and products. TheodoreMoran of Georgetown University examines potential responses to the threat posed by the globalization of U.S. defense industries. He argues that the concentration, not the nationality, of suppliers of critical defense goods is the most important criterion for concern, and proposes a U.S. defense industrial strategy that is carefully targeted at critical defense-related areas. In cases of external concentration, tarif protections, not import quotas, should be used to preserve vital U.S. defense industries. U.S. policy should give priority to research and feasibility projects with high potential defense payoffs but limited commercial prospects. The debate over the B-2 bomberhas raged for severalyears on CapitolHill. Although the Pentagon has reduced its request from 132 to 75 aircraft, the future of the entire program remains in doubt. Secretary of the U.S. Air Force Donald Rice offers a comprehensive justification for the B-2 in response to Michael Brown‘s Fall 1989 article, “The U.S.Manned Bomber and Strategic Deterrence in the 1990s,” arguing that a new manned bomber is an essential component of the U.S. strategic triad. The bomber also offersflexible conventional capabilities. Without the B-2, Rice points out, the U.S. bomber force will dwindle to fewer than 200 B-1Bs and B-52s by the year 2000 and eventually to only 97 B-1Bs. In reply to Brown‘s claim that the B-2 force will become vulnerable to a Soviet surprise SLBM attack, Rice argues that Soviet SSBN forces will lack this capability and that the United States would obtain strategic warning of any ”bolt-from-the-blue”strike. He also suggests that Brown‘s estimates of the cost of the B-2 are inflated. International Security, Summer 1990 (Vol. 15, No. 1) 01990 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 3 International Security 15:l I 4 In reply, Brown agrees that a U.S. strategic triad remains necessary, but disputes whether the B-2 satisfies military requirements that cannot be met by the B-1B or by air-launched cruise missiles. He argues that the B-2 force and its supporting tankers will be vulnerable to Soviet surprise attack if the Soviet SLBM force is modernized in the 1990s. Even if only 75 B-2s are built, the cost of the program will be prohibitive, particularly when operating and support costs are taken into account. Brown contends that reducing the size of the B-2 fleet will make the bomber even less cost-effective in comparison to other components of the strategic triad. A U.S.-Soviet START treaty has not been completed but discussion on agreements after START has already begun. Harold Feiveson and Frank von Hippel of Princeton University argue that the reduced conventional threat in Europe should make it possible for the United States to eliminate excessive counterforce targeting and to negotiate reductions of U.S and Soviet nuclear arsenals to approximately 2,000 warheads each. Suck finite-deterrence forces could be designed to maintain crisis stability, provided that the ABM Treaty is preserved. Feiveson and von Hippel detail how these limits could...

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