ABSTRACT
The heavy criticism of collective security from realist scholars and quasi-realist politicians notwithstanding, cooperative security remains the only conceptual framework in which further disarmament could possibly meet the standards of military stability for all partners involved. Disarmament and traditional arms control are therefore bound to play an important, if mainly transitory, role. Deterrence between the big rivals worked, unweakened by the gradual effects of modest arms control agreements. The concept of non-offensive defence (NOD) was originally conceived, in the mid-1970s, as an alternative to NATO's doctrine for the European central region of a mobile forward defence against the envisaged massive attack by the standing forces of the Warsaw Pact. The theoretical effectiveness in a battalion-level defence battle notwithstanding, the essentially static character of most NOD alternatives implied rather unfavourable rates of substitution of active elements by reactive ones, when considering the situation in Central Europe on the theatre level.
