Susan Colbourn, <i>Euromissiles: The Weapons That Nearly Destroyed NATO</i>

Waking up after a few years in a coma in the late 1970s, one would have thought that the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was nigh. Peace movements calling for pacifism and neutralism seemed to have gotten the upper hand, leading to the most spectacular bout of social turmoil since the late 1960s. Fake bonhomie among Western dignitaries barely concealed the West Europeans’ declining faith in U.S. leadership under President Jimmy Carter. U.S. officials, for their part, were increasingly doubtful about the European countries’ willingness to take part in joint defense efforts. These splits occasionally degenerated into bitter recriminations over the condition and direction of the Western alliance. NATO´s momentous “dual-track” decision in December 1979 to deploy 464 ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs) and 108 Pershing II missiles on European soil failed to stem the discord within the alliance.Susan Colbourn's new book retells the multi-layered and complex story of the Euromissile crisis with remarkable clarity and great panache. Her assessment of Western strategy elucidates the dilemmas facing NATO from the 1950s on regarding how to ensure a seamless web of nuclear deterrence. Reached after bumpy discussions and the botched attempt to deploy the so-called neutron bomb, the December 1979 decision to deploy GLCMs and Pershing IIs—coupled with an offer to Moscow to negotiate—was intended to overcome what the West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in 1976 described as the yawning gap in the Euro-strategic balance. Allied extended deterrence, he argued, would ultimately be credible only if Soviet capabilities were adequately matched at every level. The Soviet Union's reckless decision in the mid-1970s to deploy highly advanced SS-20 nuclear missiles made the gap impossible to ignore. Since the withdrawal of U.S. medium-range missiles in the 1960s, the Western alliance did not have comparable weapons at its disposal on European soil and had to rely on sea-based U.S. systems. These systems, however, did not provide an adequate link between a potential European battlefield and a U.S. commitment to resort to strategic nuclear weapons if ultimately needed to defend NATO allies.Yet, the 1979 decision by informed élites represented for their opponents yet another batch of nuclear missiles in Europe, and subtle strategic arguments were seemingly no match for the popular anti-nuclear cause they advanced. The 1979 reply to the perennial question, as Colbourn says, indeed involved many high-stake gambles that might not have necessarily turned out in favor of the Western alliance.The Euromissiles crisis brought to the fore once again the predicament for every democracy in the nuclear age. Deterrence of large-scale nuclear war depends on the demonstrated willingness to use nuclear weapons if needed. The weapons therefore have to be produced and deployed in order to save the same world they are capable of destroying. Not surprisingly, every generation has to digest this uncomfortable paradox. As Colbourn shows, the initial reaction of some in the West was to discredit peace movements by exposing their Soviet funding while ignoring the fact that these groups also reflected genuine fear of nuclear weapons.From Colbourn´s book we learn a lot about what happened but markedly less so why it happened—and why it all ended the way it did. We know that “antinuclear sentiment was sweeping the Alliance from Vancouver to Venice,” (p. 132), but it is perhaps more important to ask why the crisis did not tear the alliance apart. Why did the host governments ultimately decide to disregard the turmoil in the streets? This included not only the most nuclearized, frontline Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) but also the Netherlands and Belgium, which dithered until the mid-1980s. Why did all the turmoil fade away almost the minute the weapons arrived?One reason is that there was less weight in the protests than met the eye. A large number of protesters in the streets never translated into majorities at ballot boxes. The deployment of nuclear weapons was not the decisive issue in the 1983 elections, which kept pro-deployment FRG Chancellor Helmut Kohl and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in power while their leftwing anti-deployment opponents suffered historic defeats. The rise in East-West tensions at the time tended to benefit defense-minded parties over leftist doves. The emergence of peace movements in the early 1980s thus turned out to be a reaction to a specific decision rather than a sign of systemic crisis of the Western alliance.Colbourn acknowledges that the majority of people did not turn against the alliance, but her claim that they questioned “nearly all of its constituent elements,” possibly leading to gradual disintegration of public support, is unconvincing (p. 154). Before 1983, there had been over 6,000 tactical nuclear weapons deployed in Europe, which did not cause a public uproar. The problem was not nuclear weapons per se but the deployment of new ones.Politics, in the end, remained local. People were generally unhappy with the arrival of new nuclear missiles, particularly when deployed in their neighborhood. But, on the whole, they were supportive of NATO and its decision to counter the Soviet deployment of SS-20s. Once the new weapons were placed in military installations, they were not only out of sight but also out of mind. As in the late 1950s, protest movements—while providing a temporary boost to some opposition parties—ultimately disappeared not with a bang but with a whimper.It is difficult, to say the least, to agree with Colbourn´s hyperbolic statement that “what ensured NATO´s survival was not the strength of the Alliance´s policies; it was the boldness of Mikhail Gorbachev´s vision and his sweeping programmes of reforms” (p. 8). The survival of NATO was by no means Gorbachev's objective when he reached agreement with Ronald Reagan in 1987 to dispose of the land-based intermediate-range nuclear forces in Europe. The Soviet leader's calculation was that the relaxation of tensions and “elimination of the image of the enemy” would make NATO irrelevant.What ensured NATO´s survival and paved the way for the end of the Cold War on Western terms was precisely that, placed between public protest and the Soviet challenge, the alliance took the bold decision to maintain defense and deterrence. At stake was nothing less than the solidity and continuation of the transatlantic bond and the priority attached to strengthening the unity of the alliance. The weapons that, according to Colbourn, nearly destroyed the Western alliance may actually have saved it in the long run. The alternative of inaction would have arguably been a leaderless and rudderless alliance with waning public support.The denouement of the crisis showed that there was no crisis of democracy in the West. In fact, the peace movements unwittingly paid tribute to democracy by using its mechanisms to voice their discontent. The actions of the peace movements proved counterproductive to their aims. Although their leaders hoped to thwart the nuclearization of Europe, it became clear that they were only strengthening Moscow's false hope that Soviet nuclear deployments would be unchallenged. The peace movements thus diminished Moscow's incentives to reconsider its continued deployment of SS-20 missiles while strengthening its illusory power to deny the West the right to respond.The morale of the Euromissiles saga, so well described by Colbourn, is that democracies are not, by default, impervious to the need for strong defense and deterrence. Public support for deterrence tends to be weaker when the Western alliance as a whole appears weak. The lesson learned the hard way from deploying the weapons—that they preserved rather than destroyed NATO—needs to be a lesson for a lifetime, especially if a new and more debilitating crisis arises under the second Trump administration.

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