Nuclear Weapons, European Security, and Regional Deterrence

Abstract

The end of the Cold War poses new and exciting, if somewhat daunting, challenges for analysts of international relations. Not the least of these concerns is the role and effect of nuclear weapons in the emergent international system. During the Cold War years nuclear weapons were a key element, not only in defining the superpower relationship, but also in determining major elements of the international system; in the post-Cold War world, however, the role and impact of nuclear weapons are far less clear. This is particularly the case in Europe, which was the crucial theater of the Cold War and also the region in which the transition to new relationships and structures has been most dramatic. Now that the apparatus of extended deterrence is being dismantled, it is important to consider what, if anything, will be put in its place.