Word: brosio
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Leader Leonid Brezhnev surprised the West by suddenly endorsing its longstanding proposal for such troop cutbacks. NATO, suggested Brezhnev, should try tasting "the wine" of Moscow's intentions. Last week, at a Deputy Foreign Ministers' meeting in Brussels, NATO chose a man to do just that: Manlio Brosio, 74, the meticulous Italian diplomat who retired as NATO's Secretary-General last month after serving for seven years in the post...
Only the Beginning. A self-effacing, unemotional and uncommonly aloof man, Brosio is expected to leave for Moscow before mid-November to "explore" the situation, accompanied by a lean staff of no more than four or five technical experts. His mandate, as one NATO official put it, is "to taste the wine, but not to drink it"-to ask questions about Soviet intentions but not to negotiate. Though the Kremlin considers Brosio a hard-lining cold warrior because of his long service to NATO, he has stressed the importance of détente. "The Soviet Union views détente...
...central problem that Brosio must deal with is the present balance of power in Europe. In the East, the Warsaw Pact countries have 2,300,000 troops, 1,700,000 of them Russian; the NATO powers have 2,100,000 troops, only 300,000 of them American. The huge imbalance in numbers between Soviet and U.S. troops is only one factor. Another important element is the geographic gap; while Russian troops can withdraw from Central Europe by pulling back only 300 or so miles, the Americans must cross the 3,000-mile Atlantic to do so. Since the "negotiable...
This is only the beginning of Brosio's problem. NATO members in the Baltic and Mediterranean regions are afraid that any troop reduction in Central Europe would simply release a flood of Russian troops to put pressure on NATO's northern and southern flanks (see box opposite). Then there is the matter of the 329,000-man French army, which is outside Brosio's domain. France was the only one of the 15 NATO powers that did not endorse Brosio's mission, making it clear that the Italian explorer is in no way empowered to speak...
...Western Europeans will be pleased with the U.S. decision to retain its troop strength on the Continent-at least for the present-since East bloc forces already enjoy a 2-to-l advantage in men, tanks and planes in Europe. As NATO Secretary-General Manlio Brosio warned: "The Soviet Union has set itself two aims and two programs: a minimum program, which is the ratification of the status quo in Europe; a maximum program, which would be the establishment of a pan-European security system that would exclude North American countries from Europe...