ABSTRACT
The relative stability of the overall military balance between North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact was seen as being eroded by Soviet arms moves, and by the introduction of the new medium-range missiles, the SS-20s, targeted against western Europe. The policy of ‘peace through strength’ has highlighted intra-alliance differences on the future strategy of NATO and the prospects for European security. The no-first-use philosophy is a sign of the deep uneasiness felt by a growing number of people, and it is very likely that the security debates of the 1980s will be dominated not by the question of whether nuclear weapons should be used first or only in retaliation, but by the question of whether there should be nuclear weapons at all on the soil of countries which are not nuclear weapon powers. Unilateralism cannot replace mutual agreements, and parity in conventional and nuclear forces can be achieved by arms control agreements between the two military systems.
