Between The Blocs: Problems And Prospects For Europe's Neutrals And Nonaligned States
John Foster Dulles is long gone, but still Americans are prone to regard neutrality as, if not a sin, then a nuisance. This volume is a welcome antidote, neither extolling nor dismissing neutrality. Rather, it demonstrates the range of both the forms of, and the challenges to, neutrality. Kruzel's fine conclusion stresses the contrast between neutral realists, who believe quiet voices befit small powers, and neutral idealists, who seek to reshape the international system. This book is all the more valuable as Europe confronts new neutrals from Eastern Europe and new roles for neutrality in the post-Cold War order.
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Assesses (1) progress in the evolution of a European security identity, with particular reference to the EC's handling of the Yugoslav crisis (2) how US foreign policy should adjust itself thereto. "The starting point for American policy should be an end to ambivalence over the Europeans building some defense co-operation of their own", and the USA should recognize that "NATO will not continue to serve as the cornerstone for an American political role in Europe".
US public expectations of a 'peace dividend' from the collapse of the socialist bloc are unrealistic. Structural properties of US defence policy-making, and the non-existence of any strategic vision not predicated on the monolithic Soviet threat, mean that "for the next several years the 'peace dividend' will be much smaller than enthusiasts hope, and earning it will require departures from customary congressional habits". Offers advice on a strategy for reducing US defence expenditure (1) avoid a return to the 'hollow army' by shifting towards reserve or 'round-out' units (2) cut US forces in Europe in the light of CFE results, not in advance of them (3) defer various high-price equipment programmes, while preserving R&D budgets (4) using arms control to cut what the USA "can safely do without".
At the fringes of public attention to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), the United States and its European allies are considering changes in NATO nuclear arrangements that bear on two decades of Alliance practice. The issue is what to do about the nuclear threat to Western Europe, and to NATO's deterrent, posed by Soviet systems targeted on Western Europe-the SS-20 mobile missile and other Soviet weapons in the "gray area" between the strategic and the tactical. Those weapons, coupled with strategic parity between the United States and the Soviet Union, have sharpened a long-standing European concern about the commitment of the American central nuclear deterrent to Europe's defense. This issue will rank behind only the dollar on the agenda of U.S. relations with Europe in the several years ahead.

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