ABSTRACT
Bolstering internal confidence has long been as important a function of Western security policy as deterring external aggression. Even in Stalin’s day, the NATO alliance and the commitment of U.S. forces to Europe were seen as serving less to restrain the Soviet Union from marching to the Channel than to assure the Western Europeans themselves that they could carry out their economic recovery without succumbing to internal subversion backed by external force.1 This role of the Alliance in bolstering internal confidence has remained prominent ever since, with doves complaining that it is harder to satisfy the Europeans of their security than it is to deter the Russians from attacking them, and hard-liners arguing that internal discouragement is itself a potent source of peril and that if the Europeans ever felt they had no credible protection against Soviet power they could drift into appeasement and ‘Finlandization’ without the Soviet Union having to fire a shot.2 It is therefore necessary to examine this domestic aspect of European security, and to see whether today’s NATO alliance can (in Michael Howard’s terms) ‘reassure’ its own people as well as deter its adversaries.3
