ABSTRACT
A coalition's general political aims are an amalgam of the separate national goals of its members. Military postures—size and nature of forces and their strategies—are designed ultimately to determine or at least constrain a population's behavior or to prevent its being dominated by others. The USSR has tried incessantly to loosen North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) political ties in order to be able to isolate individual members and thus expose them to intimidation. There are sharp differences among NATO governments as well as among academic writers over the role of conventional forces in deterrence. Dynamic analysis lends itself to mathematical modeling to the limited extent that relevant parameters can be quantified and systematically related to outcomes. The dynamic balance rests upon the interaction of weapons and forces and upon how they are used. It also depends upon how well suited each side's forces and battle plans are to cope with the other's and to the terrain.
