ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines a framework for understanding conventional stability that suggests specific criteria—both political and military—for assessing alternative conventional arms control proposals. To enhance the stability of a security relationship, one must minimize catalysts for sudden change, to minimize any tendency of the security relationship to deteriorate quickly into crisis or shift rapidly from peace to war under pressure of a crisis. Conventional arms control offers the possibility of enhancing both political and military stability in Europe, even as it has the potential of destabilizing both dimensions of the European security relationship. Conventional arms control offers an opportunity to manipulate the variables of the military relationship so as to decrease that pre-emptive incentive. Alternative notions of how arms control can achieve stability are based on different assumptions about the causes of conflict and pose different approaches to addressing the problem.
