ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the background of the Vienna talks and examines the main developments of the talks. It assesses the future alternatives to mutual and balanced force reduction (MBFR) from a Western point of view and presents some reflections on the general relation of arms control and military policy and planning from this perspective. In 1968, a "compelling" reason that North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) formulated and proposed approaches to MBFR for NATO-Warsaw pact discussions and negotiation was to counter mounting pressure from the Eastern bloc to call a European security conference. By the middle of 1979, the Vienna negotiations on MBFR had been widely criticized in the West from a variety of points of view on diplomacy, arms control, and military policy and planning. To some, the negotiations appeared to have outlived their usefulness in dealing with domestic pressures within the United States and other NATO countries for reducing forces and cutting defense spending.
