Conventional Arms Control And East-West Security
This big, important book is a genuine East-West joint venture with its clutch of authors including two who subsequently joined President Bush's National Security Council staff and four who came to form part of the Soviet arms control negotiating teams. The book concentrates on military aspects of arms control, ranging from doctrine to verification, but it sets them in their broader context: conventional arms control cannot be separated from nuclear issues. More important, its ultimate subject is intensely political, nothing less than the future of the two Germanies and the shape of Europe.
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Our refusal to aid France in developing her nuclear strike force has never lacked American critics. Should we not seek an accommodation with General de Gaulle, trading missile technology and components for coöperation in another military or political field? Increasingly, it is said that we should. Proponents argue that France is well on the road toward acquiring her force de frappe, despite our opposition which has embittered French officials and made their program slower and more expensive. The bitterness and higher cost leave France both less willing and less able to support common enterprises, including the provision of modern French divisions to NATO and toleration of American-controlled nuclear weapons on her territory. It is said that these are unpleasant consequences of American policy, especially as they are felt by one honored major ally and not another. If we should supply Skybolt missiles to the United Kingdom for its Bomber Command, should we not assist France in some comparable way? Especially if France pays for it and eases our troubled balance of payments?
IF we look back at the year 1962 to see how it affected relations between the Atlantic powers, we find emphasis on a search for ways to put into more effective practice the spirit of partnership called for by President Kennedy in his speech of July 4. In this search, the obstacle over which both statesmen and writers have stumbled has nearly always been connected with nuclear problems and specifically with the sharing of responsibilities for the control and use of nuclear weapons.
HOW are the countries of Europe going to handle the industrial transformation brought about by the development of atomic energy? Will that transformation contribute to the building of a united Europe and if so to what extent? These questions could not have even been foreseen a few years ago, but today they are provoking the most urgent sort of discussions in the chancelleries of the Western world.

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