Word: retaliationâ
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Dates: during 1984-1984
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...present NATO deployment of five American divisions and supporting air and naval forces evolved in the 1950s, when NATO's doctrine was massive retaliation???to react to aggression with an immediate and overwhelming nuclear blow against Soviet territory. Massive retaliation paradoxically required that the total forces on the Continent be kept below the level required for conventional defense. NATO did not wish to tempt Soviet conventional aggression by doing anything to suggest that a Western response would be limited to nonnuclear means. Hence the American conventional deployment in Europe reflected political, not military, criteria: it was intended to give...
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