Home › Books & Reviews › Capsule Reviews › Restructuring Of Arms Production In Western Europe

Restructuring Of Arms Production In Western Europe

Edited by Michael Brzoska and Peter Lock
Reviewed by By Andrew J. Pierre
Winter 1992/93
Print Email
Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.
Edited by Michael Brzoska and Peter Lock
Oxford/ Stockholm: SIPRI
1992
240 pp.
$51.00

With the end of the Cold War defense industries in the industrialized world are facing a crisis. Past levels of defense expenditures and military production are falling; more severe curtailment is certain in the years ahead. These cuts will hit European defense industries even harder than American companies. This volume is highly useful and most welcome, providing a great deal of detailed information on the defense industries of the individual European nations. Some companies have moved toward diversification; there has been some privatization and many attempts at European-wide collaboration. But between the lines one senses that serious attention to defense conversion is only beginning. The high quality of this volume reflects the forward steps that SIPRI is making in its long-established work on arms production and control.

Related

Essay, Jul 1973
CAN EUROPE'S SECURITY BE "DECOUPLED" FROM AMERICA?
Andrew J. Pierre

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]

Read
Essay, Jan 1965
The Search for Consensus
Kai-Uwe von Hassel

WHEN the Western European Union was founded, and when the Federal Republic of Germany became a member of NATO, there existed a uniform political concept which was supported by all partners in the alliance. On it was based the strategic concept, which in turn was the basis for setting force requirements that were to be built up and maintained by all the members. In the course of the last few years, however, we have seen a growing divergence of opinion on the basic questions of our common defense and strategy. By the time President Kennedy took office, the concept which had been in effect up to that time-namely the principle of massive deterrence and, should it fail, of massive retaliation-was no longer considered by the United States to be credible. Strategy was adapted to the development of modern weapons technology and flexible response was made the official and binding American military doctrine.

Read
Essay, Fall 1982
Inflexible Response
Francois de Rose

Are the bases on which Western security in Europe has rested since the Atlantic Alliance has been in existence threatened? Is it true that with the change in generations there is less and less realization in public opinion of the solidarity in destiny of the peoples on both sides of the Ocean? Is it likely that a substantial withdrawal of U.S. forces on the Old Continent could be imposed on the Reagan Administration by Congress? Did the President say what is in the plans of the Pentagon, or did he make a slip of the tongue, when he mentioned the possibility of a nuclear war limited to Europe?

Read