ABSTRACT
Five years ago, when the first Pershing II missiles arrived in West Germany, almost nobody would have forecast that in August 1988 Soviet inspectors would visit the operating bases for intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) in Western Europe in order to verify the data base of the INF treaty. Least of all would one have predicted that this agreement would result in the complete elimination of all SS-20, Pershing II and ground-launched cruise missiles, as well as in the global disarmament of all land-based missiles with ranges between 500 and 1000 km (‘double zero’). Finally, who would have suggested by 1983, when nuclear weapons were among the most divisive issues in the domestic political debate, that 5 years later a new (anti-)nuclear consensus would apparently emerge which would put West Germany in the unique position of opposing the modernization of NATO’s short-range nuclear arsenals while her most important allies support it?
