ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies building blocs for a new security policy for central Europe. For centuries of human evolution, a general attitude has developed that the stronger one’s own group is, the better and the more secure one will be. A security policy devoid of illusions must satisfy the basic human belief: security requires superiority. Until the fall of 1989, the first cause for the dilemma of our security policy was probably the then adequate assumption that the Warsaw Pact could capture large parts of Western Europe if it attacked with conventionally armed troops and the West defended itself using only conventional weapons. The second cause for the dilemma is the recognition that the industrial societies in central and in western Europe would be extremely vulnerable given their densely populated areas, their centralized supply systems for food, water, sewage, electricity, and gas, their chemical industry, and their nuclear reactors.
