Meeting Gorbachev's Challenge: How To Build Down The NATO-Warsaw Pact Confrontation
Dean, a former U.S. conventional arms control negotiator, knows his subject better than anyone; his historical chapters and appendices provide a wealth of useful background. His call for a sharp conventional arms build-down, cast against the rush of events since his writing, raises sharply the question of whether the bloc-to-bloc arms control format that seemed promising when the Russian bear was strong still makes sense when the bear is weak, the Warsaw Pact crumbling and East European states eager to be rid of Soviet forces.
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The recent U.S. experiment in unilateralism has shown the limitations of "coalitions of the willing." Washington should reaffirm its commitment to the Atlantic alliance and act with others when it can, alone only when it must.
Long the bulwark of the transatlantic security relationship, NATO now faces a threat from within Europe itself. The proposed EU constitution makes clear that the new Europe seeks to balance rather than complement U.S. power-making European political integration the greatest challenge to U.S. influence in Europe since World War II. Washington must begin to adapt accordingly.
Site of post-WW2 tensions, Berlin now finds itself relegated to the margin of political and economic change across Europe. Even the FRG is showing less and less interest in Berlin's future. Nevertheless, NATO should not ignore it, but include it in a new vision for FRG-GDR relations and the ending of the division of Europe.

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