the-evolution-of-international-security-studies

82 strategic studies, deterrence and the cold warcapability to threaten the US with nuclear weapons. How could the Europeanallies believe that the US would retaliate against the Soviet Union for,say, an attack on West Germany, when the consequence could be Sovietretaliation against American cities? This question and its many variantshaunted Western strategic thinking from Sputnik onwards (Beaufre, 1965;Rosecrance, 1975; Snyder, 1978; Jervis, 1979/80; Gray, 1980; Martin 1980;Cordesman, 1982; George, 1984; Huth and Russett, 1984; Allison et al.,1985; Huth, 1988). It was also central to the literature on NATO and itsrecurrent discontents over especially nuclear strategy, which was anothermajor theme in the ISS literature (Luttwak, 1980a; Bertram, 1981/2; Freedman,1981/2; Hoffmann, 1981/2; Treverton, 1983; Duffield, 1991; Zagareand Kilgour, 1995).The questions arising from ED were addressed, though not settled,in various ways. Uncertainty over the US nuclear guarantee providedincentives for the European powers to acquire their own nuclear deterrents(which Britain had already done, and France proceeded to do), and madefor a kind of permanent crisis in NATO about the credibility of its deterrentposture and the division of labour between the US and its European allies.Mainly it pushed the US into taking various measures to strengthen itscommitment (by basing its own troops in Europe in substantial numbers),and to increase the risks to the Soviet Union of ‘salami tactics’ (taking oneslice at a time and so staying below the threshold at which nuclear weaponswould be used) by such measures as integrating so-called ‘tactical’ nuclearweapons (‘tactical’ being mainly defined by short or intermediate, ratherthan intercontinental range) into NATO’s forward deployments. ‘Flexibleresponse’, as this doctrine came to be known, led inexorably towards thelogic of maximum deterrence by trying to find force deployments ableto meet all of the possible types and levels of Soviet threat to Europe.Since NATO never managed to match Soviet conventional strength inEurope, the commitment to extended deterrence fed the nuclear logicthat strengthened maximum deterrence thinking and policy in the US.Europe was always the main issue in extended deterrence, but the problemaffected US relations with other allies such as South Korea and Japan,which were also under its nuclear umbrella.Extended deterrence and flexible response spurred another concernintrinsic to the whole logic of maximum deterrence, and also linked torival superpower interventions in crises and conflicts in the Third World:escalation and how to control it (Ball, 1981; Clark, 1982; George, 1984;Allison et al., 1985). The practice of extended deterrence inevitably ledto scenarios about low-level warfighting in response to local aggression,