The Conventional Balance in Europe: ‘Bean Count’ or Complex Assessment?

Abstract

In the few months that marked the end of 1988 and the beginning of 1989, just before the official start of the new Vienna negotiations on conventional forces in Europe, the two alliances for the first time provided the wider public with detailed information on the strengths of the armed forces belonging to countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact and stationed in Europe. Both documents included official statements assessing the ‘balance’ that was implied by the data. According to NATO,

the conventional imbalance in Europe remains at the core of Europe’s security concerns. The problem is to a large extent a function of the Warsaw Pact’s superiority in key conventional weapons systems … the Warsaw Pact, based on the Soviet Union’s forward-deployed forces, has a capability for surprise attack and large-scale offensive action; the Allies neither have, nor aspire to, such a capability.¹