ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the framework to examine the implications of both alliances' proposals and some of the principal policy issues raised by those proposals. Both alliances agree that the Warsaw Pact has a substantial superiority in tanks, artillery, and armored combat vehicles and the Soviets appear to be willing to reduce their major ground force armaments by an order of magnitude comparable to that requested by North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Each alliance appears to be targeting its proposals and rhetoric at those weapons that represent the other superpower's capability to project military power and political influence in Europe. Arms control affords an opportunity to manipulate the latter, not only through force reductions that increase the Pact's mobilization requirement, but also through "stabilizing measures" that make that mobilization process both more complicated and more visible. Ironically, depending on how forces would be restructured after such dramatic reductions, the resulting military relationship might even be less stable than the present situation.
