ABSTRACT
The Western Alliance is at present able to deter a nuclear attack by its retaliatory, nuclear, capability. The West must also be able to discourage conventional aggression by conventional capability and, if this fails, to meet conventional attack with conventional defence. Conventional war under nuclear threat will be different from the last war and the last war but one. Strategic thinking has for so long been dominated by the planners’ insistence that any war in Western Europe must be nuclear, that discussion of conventional warfare was almost relegated to the realm of science fiction. The new look in NATO’s policy makes it appear timely to re-examine the doctrine and investigate the problems of a future conventional war in Europe further than has hitherto been done. It is true that published statements on Soviet doctrine all stress that a war between nuclear powers cannot be conventional but is bound to become nuclear.
