Epilogue

Abstract

A number of problems confronted Europe in the 1980s; foremost among them was the possibility of nuclear war. No one could say whether or when a nuclear war might erupt. Nevertheless, the possibility of nuclear war led to the creation of projections or ‘scenarios’ analysing the different types of nuclear war and their efforts. The most optimistic, popular in both east and west, foresaw a limited nuclear ‘exchange’ which then would lead to internal instability and the collapse of one side. One western version emphasised national divisions within the Soviet Union; in reply to a Soviet nuclear attack the west could destroy the capital of one of the federal republics, and the fear this would engender would result in uprisings against the Great Russians and the dissolution of the Soviet Union into its component nationalities. Eastern versions foresaw either a limited nuclear exchange leading to the collapse of anarchic capitalist societies as fear led to uncontrollable rioting, or the fear of using nuclear weapons at all leaving the west helpless against the Soviet Union’s vastly superior conventional forces. In turn western military leaders relied on ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons to redress the imbalance in numbers of soldiers, and most scenarios therefore predicted some form of nuclear exchange on the battlefield.