ABSTRACT
In the 1970s the tentative and modest steps toward arms control embodied in the first and second Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I and SALT II) were accompanied and sustained by an East-West understanding that it was in the common interest to stabilize and legitimize the European territorial and political status quo. Throughout the thirty-five year history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the central military doctrine that governed all aspects of Western security policy was that of strategic deterrence, which served as the military-strategic implementation of the overarching US political strategy of containment. A major burden was placed on US-West German relations during the first Reagan administration because the president found it extremely difficult to persuade his West European allies that he was seriously committed to arms control.
