Meeting Gorbachev’s Challenge: How to Build Down the NATO-Warsaw Pact Confrontation

This book assesses the prospects for new Atlantic-to-the-Urals, NATO/Warsaw Pact force-reduction talks which began in Vienna in March 1989. The book analyzes the prospects for building down the NATO/Warsaw Pact military confrontation in Europe by means of negotiated and unilateral measures. Both the fading of the political origins of the military confrontation in Europe, as well as Mikhail Gorbachev's commitment to a radical reform of the Soviet system, created an unprecedented opportunity for a negotiated resolution of the East-West conflict. Further arms reductions would then be possible if there were an enduring, positive change in the Soviet system and in Soviet actions abroad. Meeting Gorbachev’s Challenge concludes that, in the context of the late 1980s, it was feasible to reduce the military confrontation in Europe, but not to eliminate it entirely, because the two military-alliance systems were bound to continue.