ABSTRACT
Writing in the Spring 1985 issue of Foreign Affairs, Fred Ikle, Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Regan administration, strongly advocated no less than a ‘happy ending’ to nuclear strategy. Calling the ‘dogma of allegedly stable consensual vulnerability’ both abysmally dangerous for humanity and ‘morally demobilizing’ for our democracies, the author recommended a ‘long term transformation of our nuclear strategy towards effective defensive systems for the United States and our allies’. 1
To those short-sighted Europeans who do not relish the prospect of such a ‘happy ending’ to what has been, after all, the cornerstone of the European security system for 40 years, the Under-Secretary threatened that rejecting missile defense would bring the Europeans to
The message could not be clearer. The allies had better rally around the Reagan administration’s ‘Strategic Defense Initiative’ for (a) NATO can no longer count upon a US decision to actually escalate to its ‘global nuclear forces’ in the event of a war in Europe since (b) the American public cannot be expected to bear forever the risk of nuclear annihilation just because the Europeans are geographically more exposed to the Soviet threat. In short ‘take it (SDI) or we leave’. Notwithstanding its peculiarly undiplomatic style (to put it mildly), Fred Ikle’s message is an important one which ought to be thoroughly considered by all West Europeans.
