The Political Choices

Abstract

Over the last five years unprecedented efforts have been underway to improve Western theatre capabilities. Postural changes may eventually turn out to be significant, though the current policy-formation process bears little similarity to earlier major efforts to change NATO’s military posture. The ‘new look’ in the mid-1950s was an extension of strategic force improvements; the policy of ‘conventional options’ in the early 1960s was based on new manpower requirements rather than new technologies. Recent advances, on the other hand, were stimulated above all by maturing technologies in a wide range of theatre applications. No new basic defence concept has yet emerged, but some rather comprehensive approaches have developed. Their increasing acceptance within the Alliance may eventually allow political choices to be taken into consideration where incrementalism would otherwise have had its way yet again.