ABSTRACT
As the US embarks on a new geo-political strategy, the balance of terror between Washington and Moscow shifts the focus firmly on to the Euro-strategic nuclear balance. European leaders oscillate between demanding more American missiles for their protection or insisting on less as Western European public opinion becomes increasingly nervous of nuclear war in Europe. Moreover, as Warsaw Pact forces modernize, the NATO Allies struggle to match them, crippled by the oil embargo imposed by Arab states after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. However, the Soviet Union faces its own economic problems as the burden of confronting the US and its Allies, and the suppressing of its satellites in Central and Eastern Europe, begins to demand a political flexibility that Moscow cannot offer. As the first
stirrings of Islamic Fundamentalism begin to eat at its South, and democratic aspirations destabilize its West, the Soviet Union is forced on the defensive. In this time of fracture and uncertainly the Cold War moves forward its climax.
