NATO's Nuclear Dilemmas, and: Alliance Security: NATO and the No First Use Question, and: Conventional Deterrence in Europe: Proposals for the 1980s (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 245 NATO's Nuclear Dilemmas. By David Schwartz. Washington, D.C: The Brookings Institution, 1983. 270 pp. $28.95 ($10.00 pbk.). Alliance Security: NATO and the No First Use Question. John Steinbruner and Leon Sigal, eds. Washington, D.C: The Brookings Institution, 1983. 250 pp. $28.95. ($10.00 pbk). Conventional Deterrence in Europe: Proposals for the 1980s. Report of the European Security Security Study (ESECS), American Academy of Arts and Sciences. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983. 260 pp. $9.95. Reviewed by Brad Glosserman, M.A. candidate, SAIS. These three books provide the opportunity to assess the central issue of Alliance security—NATO's nuclear posture—in an intelligent and thoughtful manner. The first, David Schwartz's NATO's Nuclear Dilemmas, traces the historical course of the Atlantic Alliance and outlines the political framework by which it has arrived at its present defense posture. The second, Atlantic Security: NATO and the No First Use Question, edited by John Steinbruner and Leon Sigal, offers the no-first-use issue as a theoretical means for critiquing NATO's defense strategy. Finally, Strengthening Conventional Deterrence in Europe: Proposals for the 1980's, the report of the European Security Study Group of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is a specific proposal for revamping the perceived shortcomings in NATO's defense. The three form a trilogy that illuminates the central issues of alliance security and politics, and also makes NATO policy comprehensible to the neophyte strategist (which is not to suggest that their value is limited to the uninitiated—quite the contrary, as the rest of this review will bear out). NATO's Nuclear Dilemmas may well be the most complete biography of the alliance to date. It charts the course of the political debates (and debacles) that have attended the evolution of NATO. Its thesis is explicit: The issues that confront NATO today, particularly in the wake of theater modernization, have been present throughout the alliance's history and are inherent in its nature and structure. Schwartz's conclusions are straightforward. First, each nuclear initiative puts great pressure on NATO for its success, and, should it fail, greater pressure still for the success of the next. The issue is fundamentally one of credibility: NATO must be capable of acting in concert for both its allies and its adversaries. The inability to live up to commitments that NATO itself has deemed necessary suggests a failure of will, reducing support among its own constituents and threatening its own security. Second, hardware changes are more difficult to implement than doctrinal ones, and the latter are more likely to have a lasting effect. Hardware attracts attention by virtue of its physical presence alone, as the Pershing II and cruise missile debates have amply indicated. On the other hand, doctrinal change is open-ended and flexible, inviting allied consultation and allowing the vagaries that necessarily accompany any issue of substance to an alliance composed of disparate countries. Doctrine invites discussion as well as more freedom of interpretation. Such doctrines as "flexible response," however, are not a sham— they are merely more conducive to the political realities of the alliance. 246 SAIS REVIEW Next, Schwartz contends that actions that challenge European fears and force them to critically examine those fears are more successful than actions that accept the same fears as a basis for action. This is common sense. By articulating their concerns, Europeans can make Americans more sensitive to their fears and misgivings, forcing them to fashion better responses to European preoccupations . It promotes greater understanding on both sides as well as educates all parties both to nuclear realities and to perceptions of those realities (which is probably more important than the realities themselves). Without a common perception of their variegated national interests, NATO cannot hope to make effective policy. Finally, he argues that efforts that cater to nonnuclear aspirations are more successful than nuclear ones. This issue was originally framed within the context of German rearmament and the consequent European fears such activity would produce. Today, however, the locus of nuclear fears has shifted; traditional enemy images are outdated, and nuclear weapons are viewed in and of themselves as destabilizing...