Conventional forces

At the same time that the USSR’s deployment of SS-20s began to draw attention to the military situation in Europe, the issue of the conventional forces balance-particularly in the area known to NATO as the Central Region2-began to attract greater scrutiny in the West. The shaping of this aspect of the balance went back nearly a decade and involved several important developments in defensive strategies, diplomacy, and military posture. First, and most important, was a decision made in December 1967

regarding NATO’s defense strategy. Known as Military Committee document 14/3 (MC 14/3), this strategy saw NATO responding to military actions by the Warsaw Pact at the same level using the same means (at least initially.) Thus, small-scale actions (such as probing assaults across the inter-German border) would be met by similar-sized forces.3

This extended the doctrine of ‘‘Flexible Response’’ adapted by the United States during the Kennedy Administration to NATO as a whole. As the term ‘‘Flexible Response’’ indicates, NATO would meet Warsaw Pact aggression on the level at which it was initiated, only resorting to increased levels of force (i.e., theatre and strategic nuclear weapons) as necessitated by the military situation. This shift in strategy, which had been debated by NATO for several years, was necessitated by the massive buildup of Soviet strategic forces, vitiating the earlier American strategy of ‘‘massive retaliation,’’ which saw NATO conventional forces as a tripwire for the use of theatre and strategic weapons against the USSR and the Warsaw Pact in the event of a European war. As with any significant decision by an alliance such as NATO, MC 14/3

had a strong political context, which would play an important role a decade later as efforts toward strengthening the Alliance’s conventional forces began to be made. This strategy was complimentary to the concurrent decision by the Alliance, made at the North Atlantic Council’s meeting in Brussels. Known popularly as the Harmel Report, this decision, titled ‘‘The Future Tasks of the Alliance,’’ outlined two key goals. First, regarding defense, ‘‘the Alliance will maintain, as necessary, a sui-

table military capability to assure the balance of forces [between NATO and the Warsaw Pact], thereby creating a climate of stability, security and confidence.’’4 This enabled NATO to carry out its second goal: