Disarmament in Europe: Military Détente in Europe as an Aspect Of International Détente

Abstract

The reorganisation of relations between states that has begun on the European continent was accompanied by the creation of a qualitatively new political atmosphere in the mutual contacts of countries belonging to different social systems. A radical improvement in the world political climate made it possible to place on the agenda the task of effecting a radical turn in the development of international relations towards cooperation and the construction of a system of genuine security and peace. It is common knowledge that these changes have been most pronounced in Europe. This is only natural, for it is on the European continent where the two military-political alliances with their powerful armed forces and big arsenals of nuclear weapons confront each other, that it is especially clear, due to purely physical conditions, that an outbreak of any armed conflict is fraught with the danger of its developing into a world thermonuclear holocaust.