Watershed in Europe: Dismantling the East-West Military Confrontation

A New and contentious concept has seeped into the transatlantic dialogue in recent times. It has been suggested that the United States may "decouple" itself from its strategic commitment to Western Europe in the future, or perhaps is in the process of doing so now. The codification of mutual deterrence in the SALT agreements of a year ago, combined with the earlier loss of U.S. nuclear superiority, is seen as having considerably eroded the remaining credibility of the American nuclear guarantee to Europe. Some go further to find in the agreements an implicit understanding between the two superpowers that neither will henceforth initiate the use of nuclear weapons in any circumstances short of the direct defense of its own territory. Arid even thoughtful Europeans who still observe the litany of faith in the nuclear guarantee do so with diminished conviction and look for opportunities through coöperative European actions to compensate for a substantial degree of American disengagement.[i]