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ABSTRACT
An insufficiently understood paradox surrounded the NATO dual-track decision. This paradox was at the core of an almost classical high impact-low probability scenario which became reality with the INF Treaty of 1987, bringing NATO closer to a crisis of to be or not to be. NATO governments (except France) formally decided in 1979 that new long-range missiles in Europe were necessary but lacked political willpower to exclude the zero option, the possibility that NATO’s missile deployments may be obviated through arms control. The article analyses why this was the case, clarifies why this mattered, and draws policy implications from this crucial episode.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks the anonymous reviewers, Sergey Radchenko and the participants of the conference ‘NATO: Past and Present’, held at King’s College London on 6 December 2019, for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 §7, Communiqué of Special Meeting of Foreign and Defence Ministers (without France), 12 December 1979: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_27040.htm.
2 Inter alia: Marilena Gala, ‘The Euromissile Crisis and the Centrality of the “Zero Option”,’ in Leopoldo Nuti, Frédéric Bozo, Marie-Pierre Rey and Bernd Rother (eds.), The Euromissile Crisis and the End of the Cold War (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press 2015), 158–175; Ilaria Parisi, ‘L’indépendance européenne en question: la France et la crise des euromissiles (1977–1987)’, Relations Internationales 178/2 (2019), 57–71; Kristina Spohr, The Global Chancellor. Helmut Schmidt and the Reshaping of International Order (Oxford: Oxford UP 2016); Tim Geiger, ‘The NATO Double-Track Decision: Genesis and Implementation’, in Christoph Becker-Schaum, Philipp Gassert, Martin Klimke, Wilfried Mausbach, and Marianne Zepp (eds.), The Nuclear Crisis. The Arms Race, Cold War Anxiety, and the German Peace Movement of the 1980s (New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2016), 52–69; Kristina Spohr, ‘Helmut Schmidt and the Shaping of Western Security in the Late 1970s: the Guadeloupe Summit of 1979’, The International History Review 37/1 (2015), 167–192; Kristan Stoddart, Facing Down the Soviet Union. Britain, the USA, NATO and Nuclear Weapons, 1976–1983 (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), ch. 3; Stephanie Freeman, ‘The Making of an Accidental Crisis. The United States and the NATO Dual-Track Decision of 1979’, Diplomacy & Statecraft 25/2 (2014), 331–355; Ruud van Dijk, ‘”A Mass Psychosis”. The Netherlands and NATO’s Dual-Track Decision, 1978‑1979”, Cold War History 12/3 (2012), 381–405; Kristina Spohr-Readman, ‘Conflict and Cooperation in Intra-Alliance Nuclear Politics: Western Europe, America and the Genesis of Nato’s Dual-Track Decision, 1977–1979’, Journal of Cold War Studies 13/2 (Spring 2011), 39–89; Philipp Gassert, Tim Geiger and Hermann Wentker (eds.), Zweiter Kalter Krieg und Friedensbewegung. Der NATO-Doppelbeschluss in deutsch-deutscher und internationaler Perspektive (Munich: Oldenbourg 2011); Christoph Bluth, Britain, Germany, and Western Nuclear Strategy (Oxford, New York: Oxford UP, 1995), ch. 7; Ivo H. Daalder, The Nature and Practice of Flexible Response. NATO Strategy and Theater Nuclear Forces since 1967 (New York: Columbia UP, 1991); Jeffrey Boutwell, The German Nuclear Dilemma (Ithaca NY: Cornell UP 1990); Susanne Peters, The Germans and the INF Missiles. Getting Their Way in NATO’s Strategy of Flexible Response (Baden-Baden: Nomos 1990); Thomas Risse-Kappen, Null-Lösung. Entscheidungsprozesse zu den Mittelstreckenwaffen 1970–1987 (Frankfurt: Campus 1988); Lothar Rühl, Mittelstreckenwaffen in Europa: Ihre Bedeutung in Strategie, Rüstungskontrolle und Bündnispolitik (Baden-Baden: Nomos 1987); Paul Buteux, Strategy, Doctrine, and the Politics of Alliance. Theatre Nuclear Force Modernisation in NATO (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983); J. Michael Legge, Theater Nuclear Weapons and the NATO Strategy of Flexible
Response (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1983).
3 Early works: James E. Goodby, Choosing Zero: Origins of the INF Treaty, Pew Case, no. 319, Washington DC: Georgetown University Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, 1988; Ernst-C. Meier, Die Null-Lösung für die nuklearen Mittelstreckensysteme. Westliche Nuklearpolitik zwischen Modernisierungs- und Abrüstungsorientierung. SWP Arbeitspapier 2562, Ebenhausen 1988.
4 James Graham Wilson, The Triumph of Improvisation. Gorbachev’s Adaptability, Reagan’s Engagement, and the End of the Cold War (Ithaca NY and London: Cornell UP 2014), ch. 1.
5 Ashley Parker, Donald Trump Says NATO Is Obsolete, The New York Times, 2 April 2016.
6 Trump on NATO: I said it was obsolete. It’s no longer obsolete, The Washington Post, 12 April 2017.
7 Emmanuel Macron warns Europe: NATO is becoming brain-dead, The Economist, 7 November 2019.
8 Merkel: ‘die transatlantische Partnerschaft ist für uns unabdingbar’ (‘indispensable’); protocol of a press conference of Federal Chancellor Merkel and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, 7 November 2019: https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/aktuelles/pressekonferenz-von-bundeskanzlerin-merkel-und-nato-generalsekretaer-jens-stoltenberg-1689810.
9 One example: Holger Nehring und Benjamin Ziemann, ‘Führen alle Wege nach Moskau? Der NATO-Doppelbeschluss und die Friedensbewegung – eine Kritik’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 59/1 (2011), 95.
10 Similarly: Rühl, Mittelstreckenwaffen, 204. According to the communiqué (see fn. 1), the alliance coupled a ‘modernization decision’ with a decision to offer negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union with ‘the immediate objective’ of establishing ‘agreed limitations on US and Soviet land-based long-range theatre nuclear missile systems’. Both measures were supposed to be ‘parallel and complementary’. Arms control might ‘modify the scale of NATO’s TNF requirements’. The communiqué ended with this sentence: ‘NATO’s TNF requirements will be examined in the light of concrete results reached through negotiations.’ In its Report to Ministers of 28 September 1979 which became part of the IDD, the Special Group on Arms Control and Related Matters stated, Kew, The National Archives [TNA], FCO 46/2109: ‘Arms control involving TNF must be a complement to, not a substitute for, TNF modernisation. (…) As such, the need for modernisation [including an “evolutionary upward adjustment in NATO’s long-range TNF”] stands on its own, independent from arms control.’ See also the final draft of the Report to Ministers by the High-Level Group (HLG): U.S. State Department cable 247,871, 21 September 1979, in National Security Archive, Thirtieth Anniversary of NATO’s Dual-Track Decision […]. Ed. by William Burr, Washington DC, 2009 [online]. For a comparison of the Communiqué and the (still classified) text of the IDD: Memorandum Referat 220, 12 December 1979, Berlin, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes [PA AA], B 150, Bd. 434. The comparison shows omissions and tailoring of passages within the Communiqué related to the strategic rationale for LRTNF modernization as spelt out in the IDD.
11 See, e.g., David S. Yost, ‘Analysing International Nuclear Order’, International Affairs 83/3 (May 2007), 549–574.
12 See inter alia: James Schlesinger, ‘The Impact of Nuclear Weapons on History’, The Washington Quarterly 16/4 (1993), 5–12; Marc Trachtenberg, ‘The Structure of Great Power Politics, 1963–1975’, in Melvyn Leffler und Odd A. Westad (eds.), Cambridge History of the Cold War, Vol. 2 (Cambridge et al.: Cambridge UP 2010), 482–402. On the point that ‘the great fear of NATO’s leaders throughout the Cold War and beyond was not that the Soviet Union or Russia would launch an invasion of Europe’ but that ‘the very hint of war might drive citizens in Europe to press their leaders to concede to the Kremlin’s demands rather than risk another cataclysm’: Timothy Andrew Sayle, Enduring Alliance. A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell UP, 2019), 2.
13 Hannes Adomeit, Imperial Overstretch: Germany in Soviet Policy from Stalin to Gorbachev. An Analysis Based on New Archival Evidence, Memoirs and Interviews. 2nd Edition (Baden-Baden: Nomos 2016), ch. 3.
14 Karl Kaiser, ‘NATO’s Double-Track Decision, the Peace Movement, and Arms Control,’ in Wolfgang Ischinger ed., Towards Mutual Security. Fifty Years of Munich Security Conference (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2014), 124: ‘If (…) the established cooperation between the US and Europe had been undermined or destroyed, new dependencies on Moscow would have emerged in which Soviet nuclear weapons superiority would have become a means of political influence and pressure over Western Europe.’
15 On reflexive control: Clifford Reid, ‘Reflexive Control in Soviet Military Planning’, in Brian P. Dailey and Patrick J. Parker (eds.), Soviet Strategic Deception (Lexington, MA et al.: Lexington Books; Hoover Institution Press 1987), 293–311.
16 Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution. Power Politics in the Nuclear Age (Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 2020), 121.
17 See the report of Alois Mertes, member of the Bundestag, in the joint session of the Foreign and Defence Committees of the Bundestag on 10 April 1978: protocol, Berlin, Bundestagsarchiv, 3104-A8/3-Prot. 27.
18 Personal, brief notes [on the first meeting during the summit, held on the morning of 5 January 1979] by Jimmy Carter, 12 January 1979, Atlanta, GA, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library [JCL], NLC 128-4-12-3-9. Carter added: ‘I [Carter] was particularly impressed and somewhat concerned about the attitude of Helmut toward appeasing the Soviets. He was much more inclined to this than the other three of us.’
19 For an early assessment by generals Harald Wust and Jürgen Brandt: Cable Stoessel, 3 November 1976, College Park, MD, National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Decentralized Files-Lot Files, PPC, DF, Box 367, WL SENSITIVE Non-China 11/76.
20 Memorandum Aaron, 13 February 1979, Declassified Documents Reference Service, doc. CK3100543617. The diplomat Jürgen Ruhfus was Schmidt’s foreign and security policy adviser in the Chancellery.
21 MemCon Thatcher-Martens-Simonet, 12 September 1979, TNA, PREM 19/15.
22 Cable Wright, 7 January 1980, TNA, FCO 46/2282.
23 Cable Carrington, 17 April 1980, TNA, FCO 46/2282.
24 Vest to Stoessel, 12 December 1980, Washington DC, Georgetown University Library [GUL], Stoessel Papers, box 2, 5 F.
25 This point was already made before the recent wave of scholarly literature: Leopoldo Nuti, ‘The Origins of the 1979 Dual Track Decision – a Survey,’ in Leopoldo Nuti ed., The Crisis of Détente in Europe (London: Routledge 2009), 57–71.
26 Cable Wright, 7 January 1980, TNA, FCO 46/2282.
27 For example: Research Memorandum REU-25 from Roger Hilsman (U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and Research), European Attitudes on Independent Nuclear Capability, 31 January 1962, in National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book no. 549, INR’s Nuclear Watch, 1959–1967. Ed. by William Burr, Washington DC, 2016 [online].
28 Klaus Wiegrefe, Das Zerwürfnis. Helmut Schmidt, Jimmy Carter und die Krise der deutsch-amerikanischen Beziehungen (Berlin: Propyläen 2005), chs. 2–5.
29 Memorandum Brzezinski, 8 July 1977, JCL, Donated Historical Material, Zbigniew Brzezinski Collection, Box 41, Subject File, Weekly Reports, 16–30.
30 Consider the position German experts took in the NPG-HLG: Record of NPG HLG meeting, held at Los Alamos 16/17 February 1978, TNA, FCO 46/1825; record of NPG HLG meeting, held in Brussels, 16/17 October 1978, TNA, FCO 46/1828. Or consider the ‘the core of problem’-description by Klaus Blech (head of delegation) during German-American consultations: Cable from U.S. Secretary of State, 16 October 1978, doc. 7, in The Euromissiles Crisis and the End of the Cold War, 1977–1987 […]. Document Reader Part II: International Diplomacy, 1975–1979. Ed. by Timothy McDonnell, Washington DC 2009, 185–193. Blech said: ‘Based on discussion in Federal Security Council, FRG saw problem not as near-term one, but as one for the 1980’s. Core of problem was that, if West’s relative weakness in theater-range systems forced NATO to confront decision to use strategic systems before Soviets, there could be a change in perceptions regarding credibility of NATO deterrent. (…) Militarily, due to increases in Soviet mid-range capabilities (SS-20, BACKFIRE), capability of Alliance to escalate may be impaired. (…) composition of NATO’s inventory could become a significant factor in the preservation of deterrence. As an example, Blech suggested a scenario in which, with nuclear war having commenced at theater level, the West would run out of theater-range delivery systems and options first, and be forced to confront the jump to central systems well before the Soviets might have to make a similar choice.’
31 For similar findings see Brendan Rittenhouse Green, The Revolution that Failed. Nuclear Competition, Arms Control, and the Cold War (Cambridge et al.: Cambridge UP, 2020). U.S. intelligence increasingly reported at the time that Soviets leaders too believed that those shifts and specifics mattered and that the Soviets ‘might be moving toward a vision of military victory in a limited nuclear war’: ibid., 163 and 214 f.
32 Just a few examples: After Richard Nixon had become U.S. President, he stated in the NSC: ‘Flexible response is baloney. (…) Nuclear umbrella no longer there.’ Notes of a NSC meeting, 14 February 1969, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, XXXIV, doc. 7. In a perceptive paper of 25 November 1970 for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, John Morse examined the effects of strategic-nuclear parity (Ann Arbor, MI, Gerald R. Presidential Library [GRFL], Melvin R. Laird Papers [LP], Box A81, NATO 2): ‘Both we and the Europeans lie naked to nuclear missile attacks. Hence both are largely paralyzed, and Europe tempted to think of preemptive surrender should the Soviets threaten use of their IRBMs. Would we counter with threats of strategic war? (…) The stakes for the U.S. are now so high that no one can be sure of anything. De Gaulle saw this coming long ago. The U.S. has given many signs over the last ten years that it might well “bug out” when a decision to use any nuclear weapons at any level comes to a head. Our military services have reached this conclusion and planned accordingly. (…) The Soviets may well regard our present NATO strategy as a façade likely to fall apart at first real test, or to crumble eventually of its own accord as its basic weaknesses become more evident. The FRG is trying to identify the long-term winner. (…) The “feeling” of security which NATO strategy and deterrence have given Europe for twenty years could vanish overnight, or it could erode more slowly.’ In late 1978, chancellor Schmidt, in conversation with Henry A. Kissinger, openly doubted whether the U.S. would use strategic nuclear forces in a crisis if the problem of the euromissiles remained ‘unsolved’: memorandum Bölling on conversation Schmidt-Kissinger, 2 December 1978, Hamburg, Helmut Schmidt Private Archives [AHS], HS Privat TG XI, 1978/II, Nr. 45. See also Kissinger’s speech at a ‘NATO, The Next 30 Years’ conference held at the Palais d’Egmont in Brussels on 1–3 September 1979: Henry A. Kissinger, ‘The Future of NATO’, The Washington Quarterly 2/4 (Autumn 1979), 3–17.
33 That question was directly raised by U.S. Secretary of Defense Harold Brown in parallel to the NPG meeting in Ottawa in mid-1977. In conversation with his British colleague on 9 June 1977 Brown said: ‘The fundamental issue was whether one could cover the full spectrum with US strategic weapons and some very short range battlefield nuclear weapons capability, leaving the full theatre nuclear weapon capability to decline.’ MemCon, TNA, FCO 46/1555.
34 Helmut Schmidt asserted during the Guadeloupe summit: ‘He had been appalled when he had read a recent WINTEX scenario. He was reasonably robust but he found it difficult to envisage a situation in a few years’ time which postulated fighting taking place in Germany alone. (…) Anyhow, in his view, there was a missing link in the progression of the flexible response.’ Extract From Four-Power Discussions in Guadeloupe 5/6 January 1979: Second Session, TNA, PREM 16/1984.
35 Among others, Kaiser concurs: ‘In Schmidt’s opinion, the absence of viable Western LRTNF would “decouple” Europe from the strategic level of deterrence’: Kaiser, NATO’s Double-Track Decision, 121. Daalder’s interpretation remains compelling: ‘The logic of Schmidt’s position on LRTNF largely pointed to the absolute requirement for some in-theater nuclear capability for long-range employment (…). Schmidt never really developed this rationale publicly.’ Daalder, The Nature, 217.
36 See, e.g., Schmidt’s letter to Egon Bahr of 15 December 1978, Bonn, Archiv der sozialen Demokratie (AdsD), Egon Bahr Papers, 1/EBAA001082. It is also remarkable to get a sense of Schmidt’s concern that an unwanted world war through misperception and crisis dynamics was more than a remote possibility. See Schmidt’s public comparison of the situation after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan with ‘1914ʹ: Karl-Heinz Janßen, Wie war das 1914?, Die Zeit, 23 May 1980. On 15 February 1982 Schmidt argued in conversation with U.S. Ambassador Arthur F. Burns: ‘he fears a Berlin Crisis will occur around 1984, and that he would not expect a Republican administration to react with the courage shown in former years by democratic administrations.’ Schmidt apparently referred to the Kennedy years. Note by Burns, GRFL, Burns Papers, Box U3, Memoranda and Notes: Meeting with Schmidt 2/24/1982.
37 In fact, the Schmidt government preferred LRTNFs also in Germany and successfully sought to be able to indefinitely postpone the deployment of the ‘neutron bomb’ for battlefield artillery and LANCE missiles without openly opposing it, all the while the government worked to preserve a public appearance that it agreed in principle to the stationing of such nuclear weapons in Germany: Andreas Lutsch, ‘Gleichgewicht vor Westbindung. Die Regierung Schmidt und die ‘Neutronenbombe’ (1977/78) – eine Neubewertung‘, Historische Zeitschrift 310/1 (2020), 52–89.
38 For example: Helmut Schmidt, Null-Lösung: im deutschen Interesse, Die Zeit, 8 May 1987.
39 MemCon, Thatcher-Schmidt et al., 18 November 1981, TNA, FCO 46/2716. The same point about Schmidt’s expectation was made by Egon Bahr in conversation with the author on 29 May 2012.
40 Note from Ruhfus on the afternoon session of Schmidt, Callaghan, Carter und Giscard on 5 January 1979, Akten zur Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland [AAPD] 1979, I, doc. 3. See also the ‘extract’ in fn. 32. In a speech before the Tenth German-American Conference in Hamburg on 16 March 1979 (AHS, Eigene Arbeiten 6.2.-2.4.1979, Nr. 18), Schmidt said that, land-based JUPITER IRBMs within Allied Command Europe were dismantled in 1963, ‘not modernized’ and ‘not re-equipped. So the problem is an old problem. (…) But Germany is not a nuclear weapon state’ and did not want to ‘lead in this field, especially not after our experience with the MLF.’ In conversation with U.S. Senator Joe Biden (Chairman of the Subcommittee on European Affairs, U.S. Senate) on 31 May 1979, Schmidt said: ‘in the end it will be necessary to acquire some hardware. (…) A certain counterpoise has to be created, but not one of full parity’: MemCon, PA AA, B 150, Bd 418. In conversation with Prime Minister of Italy, Giulio Andreotti, on 10 July 1979 Schmidt said: ‘He (the Chancellor) could not and did not want to close his mind [“sich verschließen”] to the logic that a Western counterpoise to Soviet SS-20s and Backfire bombers was necessary,’ AAPD 1979, doc. 206. In an interview printed in The Economist, 6 October 1979, 51, Schmidt said: ‘There were Western medium-range ballistic missiles and intra-range weaponry in the late 1950s, but they were dismantled by 1963 which I think from hindsight was a wrong step. They should have been modernized rather than dismantled. (…) I wouldn’t ask for parity, I would ask for a sufficient counterweight.’ In conversation with the Premier of the People’s Republic of China, Hua Guofeng, on 23 October 1979, Schmidt said the Federal Republic of Germany was ready to become an ‘aircraft carrier for U.S. intermediate-range missiles’ and it sought to sustain the Soviet interest in avoiding military conflict: MemCon, AdsD, Egon Bahr Papers, 1/EBAA000832.
41 See Schmidt’s unambiguous statement in the meeting of the Bundessicherheitsrat on 9 November 1978, that is, less than two weeks after his IISS speech (of 28 October 1977): protocol, AAPD 1977, doc. 318.
42 See the various encounters between U.S. senior-level officials and their European colleagues especially from Bonn and London: n.d. memorandum Gelb, Cruise Missile Consultations in NATO, Bonn and London, JCL, NLC 132 (NSC Institutional Files, 1977-1981)-15-4-2-2; cable Bennett, 7 March 1978, JCL, NLC 16–23-6-13-9. After the crucial HLG meeting in Los Alamos (16/17 February 1978), Kevin R. Tebbit from the UK Ministry of Defence observed about how the results of this meeting were protocolled thereafter: ‘The Americans have tended to play down the case for increasing long range in-theatre capability, which was identified at Los Alamos, while increasing the importance attached to battlefield and interdiction forces’. some ‘in the US Defence establishment’ still saw TNF as means ‘to resolve a conflict on the European battlefield rather than as political signals to demonstrate the risks of strategic escalation’: memorandum Tebbit, 21 March 1978, TNA, FCO 46/1825.
43 Quinlan to Gillmore, 13 February 1980, TNA, FCO 46/2282.
44 Final draft of response to PRM/NSC-38, 18 August 1978, doc. 5 in The Euromissiles Crisis […] Document Reader Part II, 41–176; memorandum Brzezinski, SCC meeting of 23 August 1978 on PRM-38, JCL, NLC 31–147-7-22-4. Rittenhouse Green, The Revolution, 214 makes the compelling points that the U.S. ‘attempt to “re-explain” MAD to the Allies was (…) disappointing.’ Beliefs about the nuclear balance, ‘hether held by friend or foe, needed to be accounted for in US policy.’
45 See especially the Senate hearings on the INF-Treaty and, for example, the statement from former U.S. Secretary of Defense Harold Brown on 29 January 1988: NATO Defense and the INF Treaty. Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services United States Senate. One Hundredth Congress. Second Session. January 29, February 1, 2, 1988. Part II. Washington DC 1988, 6–8. On the crucial distinction between the requirements of deterring a competitor and of reassuring allies: Michael Howard, ‘Reassurance and Deterrence: Western Defense in the 1980s’, Foreign Affairs 61/2 (Winter 1982), 309–324.
46 Memorandum Moberly, 9 March 1979, TNA, FCO 46/2104; memorandum Tebbit, 21 March 1978, TNA, FCO 46/1825.
47 Helmut Kohl, Erinnerungen 1982–1990 (Munich: Droemer Verlag 2005), 201 f. makes the point that deploying LRTNF in Germany was ‘die Schicksalstunde Deutschlands. Wäre die Nachrüstung gekippt, hätte die Entwicklung einen ganz anderen Verlauf genommen. Die Befürchtung vieler Partner im Westen, dass die Bundesrepublik abdriften könnte, hätte sich erfüllt. (…) Es wäre nicht zur deutschen Einheit und auch nicht zum Zusammenbruch des Warschauer Paktes gekommen.’
48 On the ‘dramatic change’ of Reagan’s perception of Gorbachev’s intentions in 1987/88 which ‘no longer’ appeared to be ‘expansionist’: Keren Yarhi-Milo, Knowing the Adversary. Leaders, Intelligence, and Assessment of Intentions in International Relations (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton UP, 2014), 220.
49 Robert Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails. Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War (Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 2010), 176 explains: ‘Soviet experts who understood that thoroughgoing reforms would undermine the stability of the USSR could not believe that Gorbachev was serious’.
50 Nicholas J. Wheeler, Trusting Enemies: Interpersonal Relationships in International Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), ch. 6.
51 The INF Treaty combined the logic of highly selective disarmament steps – without, of course, opening up a prospect for general and complete disarmament – and a competitive logic that informed American arms control policy which, in turn, sought ‘to maintain a preponderance of military power’: John D. Maurer, ‘The Purposes of Arms Control’, Texas National Security Review 2/1 (2018), 14.
52 In late 1985, for example, the German Ministry of Defence postulated a ‘minimum LRINF requirement of 300 to 400 warheads’: Howe to Thomas, 7 November 1985, TNA, FCO 46/4654.
53 Thomas E. Halverson, The Last Great Nuclear Debate. NATO and Short-Range Nuclear Weapons in the 1980s (Basingstoke; New York: Macmillan, St. Martin’s Press 1995); Michael Broer, Die nuklearen Kurzstreckenwaffen in Europa. Eine Analyse des deutsch-amerikanischen Streits über die Einbeziehung der SRINF in den INF-Vertrag und der SNF-Kontroverse (Frankfurt et al.: Peter Lang 1993).
54 ‘In the post-INF period, German officials are especially interested in an increased U.S. commitment to further deployments of modern air-based and sea-based nuclear systems. […] These efforts include additional deployments of dual capable FB-111s which can perform nuclear and follow-on force attack roles, as well as submarine launched ballistic missiles and sea launched cruise missiles’: NATO Security Policy in the Post-INF Treaty Era. Report of a Staff Study Mission to France, Belgium, Great Britain, Austria, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Soviet Union, January 13–26, 1988 to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives. Washington DC 1988, 13.
55 On the point that the basic consensus had fallen apart in West Germany: Karl Kaiser, ‘Der Zerfall des sicherheitspolitischen Konsenses in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland’, in Manfred Funke et al. (eds.), Demokratie und Diktatur. Festschrift für Karl Dietrich Bracher (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag 1987), 476–491.
56 Thomas Enders, Holger H. Mey, and Michael Rühle, ‘The New Germany and Nuclear Weapons’, in Patrick J. Garrity and Steven A. Maaranen (eds.), Nuclear Weapons in the Changing World. Perspectives from Europe, Asia, and North America (New York and London: Plenum Press 1992), 128.
57 Similarly: Sayle, Enduring Alliance, 214.
58 The Dutch position initially called for a non-reciprocal zero option which would not require the Soviets to eliminate all land-based IR/MRBMs in return for non-deployment or dismantling of PERSHING IIs and GLCMs. The German position as of mid-September 1979 called for a mutual zero solution. In both the Special Group and the HLG, German delegates consistently took a tough stance against even the possibility of a zero option, e.g., note of discussion of 1st Meeting of the SG, 19/20 April 1979, TNA, FCO 46/2106.
59 The preliminary SG report to NATO Ministers argued that any kind of zero option would be as ‘detrimental’ as an arms control offer that would only camouflage NATO’s TNF modernization: report included in circular to U.S. Embassies in NATO states, 23 August 1979, JCL, NLC 12-R-55-7-11. A key sentence in the report was: ‘Arms control involving TNF must be a complement to, not a substitute for, TNF modernization.’
60 Memorandum Ruhfus, 14 September 1979, AAPD 1979, doc. 268. That was a crucial change in the position of the German government. Personally, Schmidt had started referring to the zero option in the spring of 1979: memorandum Ruth, 5 June 1979, PA AA, B 150, Bd. 419; Wiegrefe, Das Zerwürfnis, 273. Leaving this personal activity aside, the government had thus far neither ruled out the zero option as a potential outcome of arms control, nor answered the question whether it opined that a certain ‘minimum modernization,’ that is, a minimum deployment of PERSHING IIs and/or GLCMs, was an absolute necessity: memorandum Blech, 10 September 1979, PA AA, B 150, Bd. 426.
61 Cable Tandecki, 26 September 1979, PA AA, B 150, Bd 427.
62 As this paper argues, Schmidt expected that the Soviets would never agree to the zero option. He also identified a possibility of how a zero option might be combined with LRTNF modernization, namely when – following an arms control agreement – LRTNFs would not be deployed on German soil, but in other parts of Europe like Italy or in Britain. Schmidt explicitly signaled this possibility to Brezhnev via their ‘backchannel’ but explicitly added that this outcome was not a ‘most likely’ one. Thus, Schmidt cautiously embalmed the Soviet leadership that Moscow had to expect LRTNF deployments also German soil: note on conversation Schmidt-L.[ednew], 10/11 October 1979, AdsD, Egon Bahr Papers, 1/EBAA000956.
63 See, e.g., Tim M. Weber, Zwischen Nachrüstung und Abrüstung. Die Nuklearwaffenpolitik der Christlich-Demokratischen Union Deutschlands zwischen 1977 und 1989 (Baden-Baden: Nomos 1994), ch. 3.
64 An early example of Schmidt’s reference to the zero option: Schmidt’s conversation with Kosygin and Gromyko in Moscow on 25 June 1979: AAPD 1979, doc. 188.
65 ‘The Chancellor said he wishes to avoid doing anything which would make reunification of Germany impossible. He could not say this publicly in Europe. However, he has said this privately to Giscard, and Giscard didn’t like it very much.’ MemCon, Brzezinski-Schmidt et al., 3 October 1978, JCL, PP, NSA, Brzezinski Material, 7 Subject File, Box 33, Memcons: Brzezinski, 9/78-2/79. NATO Secretary General Joseph Luns told French Foreign Minister Jean François-Poncet that German policy was characterized by an ‘attitude plus réservée envers les Etats-Unis et l’Alliance Atlantique’, ‘basée sur l’espoir de faire avancer ainsi les possibilities d’une reunification des deux Allemagnes’. François-Poncet replied: ‘D’ailleurs, la France aussi verrait une réunification allemande, â laquelle il faut pour des raisons compréhensibles payer du “lip service”, avec “appréhension”.’ Memorandum Luns on his meeting with François-Poncet at the Quai d’Orsay, 6 May 1979, Brussels, NATO Archives, Luns Papers, 2414–1. SG/79/358.
66 See the explanation of Germany’s approach on the part of Wilhelm Hönyck, a diplomat on secondment to group 23 (security policy) of the Chancellery: note from Synnott, 8 February 1979, TNA, FCO 46/2104.
67 See, e.g., Schmidt’s ‘backchannel’ letter to Brezhnev, 10 October 1979, AdsD, Egon Bahr papers, 1/EBAA000956.
68 Stoessel to Zimmerman, 31 January 1979, GUL, Stoessel Papers, box 2, 5Di: ‘If you ask Europeans whether it is German policy or American policy that has seemed to be more inconsistent over the past two years, I think the answer would be pretty clear.’
69 The agreement on ‘establishment of stockpiles of atomic weapons in the Federal Republic’ of 27 March 1959 was implemented by legal arrangements of 1960 which established so-called Programs of Cooperation (PoCs) between U.S. forces, on the one hand, and the German Luftwaffe and Army, on the other. Two additional regulations are noteworthy. First, the so-called Consultation Guidelines, as agreed upon at the 6th Ministerial Meeting of the NPG in Warrenton, VA, in 1969, supplemented the so-called Athens Guidelines of 1962 and introduced a principle into the structure of a multilateral NATO consultation mechanism regarding potential requests of Major NATO commanders for release of nuclear weapons for selective use to defend NATO: According to this principle, in such consultations (should they take place, time and circumstances permitting) ‘special weight should be given to the views of the NATO countries most directly affected’, including ‘the country on or from whose territory nuclear weapons would be employed’ and ‘the country or countries providing or manning the envisaged means of delivery’: NPG/US(69)-D1, US Views on Consultation on Nuclear Weapons Use, attached to memorandum Laird, 5 May 1969, GRFL, LP, Box C13, NATO, 1969‑1973. Second, a bilateral arrangement was relevant: letter Johnson to Kiesinger, 9 September 1968, FRUS 1964–1968, XV, doc. 286.
70 For example: memorandum Ruth, 30 August 1979, AAPD 1979, doc. 248. In consultations with William C. Foster, Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, on the first two articles of the future NPT, German Ambassador Knappstein asked whether existing PoCs could be modernized – for example, by introducing new delivery vehicles –, if NATO allies acceded to the NPT. Foster replied that the NPT was neither concerned with U.S. nuclear weapons deployments nor with delivery vehicles held in readiness by U.S. allies for delivery of such nuclear weapons in war: telex Knappstein, 13 January 1967, PA AA, B 150, Bd. 95. In 1968, U.S. Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford stated, at the request of the German government, at the 3rd Ministerial meeting of the NATO Nuclear Planning Group that accession to the NPT would not impair ‘further development of nuclear defence arrangements within the alliance compatible with articles I and II of the non-proliferation treaty’. The U.S. government, Clifford added, had formally stated this interpretation to the government of the Soviet Union which did not object and the U.S. government would publicly declare its NPT interpretations: memorandum Grewe/Knoke, 19 April 1968, PA AA, B 150, Bd. 125. In the NPT hearings before the U.S. Senate on 10 July 1968, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk declared: ‘The Treaty deals only with what is prohibited, not with what is permitted. (…) It does not deal with, and therefore does not prohibit, transfer of nuclear delivery vehicles or delivery systems, or control over them to any recipient, so long as such transfer does not involve bombs or warheads. (…) It does not deal with arrangements for deployment of nuclear weapons within Allied territory as these do not involve any transfer of nuclear weapons or control over them unless and until a decision were made to go to war, at which time the treaty would no longer be controlling.’ Non-Proliferation Treaty. Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations United States Senate. Ninetieth Congress. Second Session on Executive H, 90th Congress, second Session, Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Part 2. 10 July 2011, 12, and 17, 1968. Washington DC 1968, 5. This declaration was confirmed by U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul H. Nitze, U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers and U.S. Secretary of Defense Melvyn Laird in Senate hearings on 11 July 1968, 18 February 1969, and 20 February 1969, respectively.
71 Point made by David Aaron, head of the U.S. delegation, in Bonn: MemCon, 18 July 1979, AAPD 1979, doc. 210.
72 Ibid., point made by Blech. As Quinlan noted in early 1980, the Federal Republic finally rejected a nuclear sharing arrangement regarding GLCMs or Pershing II in Germany. ‘They first made this clear in February 1978. This looks obvious now but was by no means so at the time.’ Letter Quinlan to Gillmore, 13 February 1980, TNA, FCO 46/2282.
73 Point made by Donald R. Cotter (U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense (Atomic Energy), 1973–1978) at a senior-level international conference in September 1990: The History of NATO TNF Policy. The Role of Studies, Analysis and Exercises. Conference Proceedings, vol. 1: Introduction and Summary. Ed. by Robert L. Rinne, Albuquerque, NM, Livermore, CA 1994, 54. A vehement critic at the time was SACEUR Alexander Haig who had declared in January 1979 to resign from that post, effective on 30 June 1979. In his last conversation with Schmidt in mid-June 1979 (which happened to take place a week before Haig became the target of an assassination attempt), Haig sought to impress on the Chancellor to accept a nuclear sharing arrangement for LRTNF which Schmidt, once again, turned down. If Germany does not become a ‘user nation’, Haig ended, this will ‘ultimately have a negative impact on the unity of the alliance’: MemCon, 18 June 1979, AAPD 1979, doc. 178. Schmidt’s rival for the Chancellery in the 1980 Bundestag elections, former Minister of Defence Franz Josef Strauß, was also a critic: Strauß: Sowjetmacht rein defensive? Das ist Unsinn, Die Welt, 12 February 1979. Strauß added in conversation with U.S. President Carter: If he became Chancellor, he would agree to LRTNF deployments in Germany regardless of the attitude of other European NATO countries towards deployment and he would want nuclear sharing to apply to LRTNFs in Germany: MemCon, 13 March 1980, JCL, NLC 128 (Plains File)-1-9-1-8.
74 Memorandum CIA National Foreign Assessment Center, 21 August 1979, JCL, NLC 12–55-7-11-9.
75 Point made by Air Marshall Harding (SHAPE), protocol of the 5th meeting of the SG, 6/7 September 1979, TNA, FCO 46/2109; cable Ruth, 6 September 1979, PA AA, B 150, Bd 426.
76 Record of an NSC meeting, 13 October 1981, Yorba Linda, CA, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Kraemer Files, Box 3, NATO TNF Arms control NSC 2.
77 Gorbachev’s point: Transcript of Politburo session, 17 December 1987, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB238/russian/Final1987-12-17Politburo%20Session.pdf.
78 Donald R. Cotter, ‘The Emerging INF Agreement: A Case of Strategic Regression’, Strategic Review 15/3 (1987), 17 and 11; François de Rose, ‘Brinkmanship at Reykjavik,’ The Atlantic Community Quarterly (Spring 1986), 295–299.
79 Walther F. Hahn, ‘The INF Treaty, the Alliance, and the Failure of Strategic Realism’, Comparative Strategy 7/4 (1988), 347. On the judgement that the zero option was ‘politically and strategically unsound’: and David S. Yost, ‘The History of NATO Theater Nuclear Force Policy: Key Findings from the Sandia Conference’, Journal of Strategic Studies 15/2 (1992), 240.
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Andreas Lutsch
Dr. Andreas Lutsch is a Junior Professor of intelligence analysis at the Federal University of Administrative Sciences, Department of Bundesnachrichtendienst, Berlin. His articles were published, or are forthcoming, in the Journal of Strategic Studies, Journal of Cold War Studies, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Historische Zeitschrift, Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift and SIRIUS – Zeitschrift für strategische Studien. Dr. Lutsch also published the monograph Westbindung oder Gleichgewicht? Die nukleare Sicherheitspolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland zwischen Atomwaffensperrvertrag und NATO-Doppelbeschluss (Munich: De Gruyter, 2020).