PART ONE

The General State of European Security

François Heisbourg, France

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The state of European Security at the end of the 1980s is a perplexing combination of immobility and change. A description of the existing security situation based on military and strategic criteria leads one to conclude that the present is still much like the past—not necessarily pleasant, certainly not optimal, but eminently stable. If one takes into account the forces of economic and societal change, however, a rather different picture emerges, that of a significant degree of geopolitical fragility with a potential for evolution unprecedented since the emergence of the postwar order in Europe. It is thus important not only to recall the elements of continuity in European security, but to assess the potential of the forces of change. Clearly, a discussion of European security has to include an analysis of economic trends. Policy options in the area of conventional arms control need to be examined with regard to the factors of transformation of the European security scene; indeed, choices in arms control can have a significant influence, positive and negative, on both strategic change and Stability. Therefore, and in view of the likelihood of lengthy, complex conventional arms control negotiations, European security must be analyzed not only in the present context but also in light of the potential impact of the ongoing changes affecting Europe.

"Déjà Vu" and "Plus Ça Change ..."

The use of military and strategic indicators to describe the general state of European security produces an image of basic continuity. Briefly summarized, the postwar geostrategic scene in Europe is characterized by a combination of overlapping factors, five of which stand out particularly prominently:

• the division of Europe;

• the permanence of the postwar alliances;

• the superpowers' military presence and involvement on the continent; -the deployment of massive and asymmetrical conventional forces, concentrated most notably in Central Europe; and

• the central role of nuclear deterrence.

These five factors are not equally acceptable or stabilizing: it is now generally admitted, for example, that major conventional force imbalances are undesirable, whereas the legitimacy of nuclear deterrence in Europe is not universally accepted. Nor is their moral, political or military content identical in the East and the West. This truism has fundamental implications for defining the objectives of conventional arms control, and for the difficult choices that may have to be made between ethical, political and military goals on both sides. Nor are these elements immutable: Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev's announcement at the United Nations on December 7, 1988, of major conventional force reductions may indeed herald significant movement in the bases of European security. However, these factors have been, and currently remain, the foundations of the current order, and the fact that they mean different things to the two sides bears recalling.

The Division of Europe

The political division of Europe remains a physical reality, embodied by the Tron Curtain' not only in Berlin and between the two German states. Beyond the existence of a steel and concrete cordon sanitaire from the beaches of the Barents Sea southward, division is also deeply rooted in sharply differing economic and political regimes on both sides of the divide. Setting aside all other considerations, the strategically most relevant political difference in the current situation between the members of the Council of Europe, on the one hand, and the states affiliated with the Warsaw Pact, on the other, may well be the absence of a reasonably transparent and stable process of political legitimization and succession in the latter group of countries. This creates basic uncertainties as to the Stability of incumbent regimes, with a corresponding risk for the future of the arms control process and the Security situation more generally. The specific situation of Germany, as a divided nation in a divided Europe, remains as topical as ever and imposes its particular political and strategic constraints on both alliances, as discussed further below.

The Permanence of the Postwar Alliances

The postwar alliances have been remarkably durable by any historical peacetime standards: NATO, a 40-year-old alliance primarily composed of multiparty, economically liberal states with a modicum of agreement on the bases of joint defense vis-a-vis the Warsaw Pact's military threat (and, in the case of the members of the integrated commands, a common military organization and strategic concept, of which extended nuclear deterrence is an essential component); and the Warsaw Pact, the military and political grouping of states governed by communist parties, with any real or potential departures from the single-party monopoly being forestalled, in the past, by military intervention.

The Superpowers' Military Presence and Involvement

The superpowers structure the security order in Europe through their respective alliances, as well as through the presence of their military forces. These roles and this presence are not equivalent. This is clear in moral as well as in political terms. The United States has refrained from using its military forces to deal with domestic political contingencies in Europe; and when U.S. forces have been requested to leave, they have agreed to do so (France, 1966; Torrejón, Spain, 1988).

This absence of equivalence also holds true in strictly military terms, whether on the central front or in the whole European theater. U.S. ground and air forces (245,800) represent 27 percent of total...