Tactical Nuclear Weapons and NATO.pdf - Program on Strategic ...

it, the Allies were unlikely to agree in peacetime over
the role <strong>and</strong> timing of TNW use. France’s withdrawal
from <strong>NATO</strong>’s integrated military structure, the establishment
of the <strong>Nuclear</strong> Planning Group (NPG), <strong>and</strong>
the incorporation of precision-guided munitions into
<strong>NATO</strong> plans also facilitated inter-allied agreement.
Meanwhile, popular opposition cancelled the proposed
U.S. Enhanced Radiation Warheads (“neutron
bombs”), which might have increased the utility of
TNWs against Soviet armored forces. The Soviet-NA-
TO détente of the 1970s enabled mutual reductions in
nuclear weapons, <strong>and</strong> the <strong>NATO</strong> governments chose
to relinquish much of their TNW capacity in order to
lubricate the prospects of modernizing their intermediate
nuclear forces (INF) in response to a comparable
Soviet INF modernization effort, <strong>and</strong> later to improve
relations with a rapidly changing Russia. The December
1979 <strong>NATO</strong> foreign <strong>and</strong> defense ministers meeting
decided to deploy 572 American ground-launched
cruise missiles (GLCMs) <strong>and</strong> Pershing 2 intermediaterange
missiles, while undertaking arms control negotiations
with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR). They unilaterally withdrew 1,000 U.S. TNWs
from Europe. At their October 1983 Montebello meeting,
the NPG announced that, without a breakthrough
in the INF talks, the deployments of Pershing 2 <strong>and</strong>
the GLCMs would proceed, but announced that another
1,400 American tactical warheads would be
withdrawn.
The INF Treaty of December 1987 banned all U.S.
<strong>and</strong> Soviet ground-based ballistic <strong>and</strong> cruise missiles
with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (km). <strong>NATO</strong> Supreme
Allied Comm<strong>and</strong>er Europe (SACEUR) General
Bernard Rogers recommended that <strong>NATO</strong> implement
the second half of the 1983 Montebello decision <strong>and</strong>
7