Description
This essential new volume reviews the threat perceptions, military doctrines, and war plans of both the NATO alliance and the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War, as well as the position of the neutrals, from the post-Cold War perspective.
Based on previously unknown archival evidence from both East and West, the twelve essays in the book focus on the potential European battlefield rather than the strategic competition between the superpowers. They present conclusions about the nature of the Soviet threat that could previously only be speculated about and analyze the interaction between military matters and politics in the alliance management on both sides, with implications for the present crisis of the Western alliance.
This new book will be of much interest for students of the Cold War, strategic history and international relations history, as well as all military colleges.
Table of Contents
1. Imagining War in Europe: Soviet Strategic Planning 2. Storming on to Paris: The 1961 "Buria" Exercise and the Planned Solution of the Berlin Crisis 3. War Plans under Stalin and Khrushchev: The Czechoslovak Pivot 4. The Warsaw Pact’s Special Target: Planning the Seizure of Denmark 5. The Other Side of Détente: US Quest for Limited Nuclear Options, 1969–1974 6. Silent Allies and Hostile Neutrals: Nonaligned States in the Cold War 7. Andreas Wenger, The Politics of Military Planning: Evolution of NATO’s Strategy 8. Beatrice Heuser, Alliance of Democracies and Nuclear Deterrence 9. Securing Small-State Interests: Norway in NATO 10. How Strong Was the "Weakest Link"? Danish Security Policy Reconsidered 11. To Defend or Not to Defend: Drawing the Line in the Netherlands 12. Arrogant and Unilateralist: McNamara, Vietnam, and the Defense of Europe
