Word: westing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Europe. Deciding the precise terms of this call for arms talks will be one of the main items before NATO Foreign Ministers. Because neither the Pershing II nor the cruise will be ready for deployment for at least three years, some NATO governments hope that this will give East-West negotiators time to agree on ceilings for Europe-based atomic arms...
...more likely to retaliate against Europe with its own theater nuclear weapons rather than against the U.S. with strategic weapons. While the destruction from a theater nuclear exchange would be tremendous, it would still fall far short of the nuclear holocaust that would almost inevitably consume East and West. This reasoning was at the heart of Henry Kissinger's widely noted September speech in Brussels. Kissinger argued that the American strategic arsenal alone cannot be relied upon to defend Europe, since to do so would almost certainly elicit massive Soviet retaliation against...
NATO's deployment of theater nuclear forces is thus viewed as a means of closing a dangerous gap in the West's deterrence. Says a leading British official: "The reason for NATO modernizing its nuclear forces is that we have to fill a position between the tactical Lance missile [a short-range mobile missile] and the big bang. We cannot make counterthreats credible without theater nuclear weapons." Notes American Defense Analyst Gregory Treverton of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies: "It is important to remember that deterrence is a combination of will and weaponry. Weapons...
...decision to deploy theater nuclear forces has been two years in the making. British officials claim to be the first to have noticed the growing military imbalance in Europe; they sent a note about it to Washington in early 1977. Several months later, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt raised the issue in a London speech. He deplored the fact that the "Euro-strategic balance" was shifting against the West and urged that it be restored. Soon thereafter, NATO created a High-Level Group, chaired by the U.S., to study the matter...
...right, but we are fighting for the West as well," said Moroccan Brigadier Muhamed Abruk, scanning the desert horizon from his headquarters at Laayoun, deep in the western Sahara. "We are the last fort protecting Western interests in this part of the world." For four years, Morocco has been waging a costly campaign to maintain its disputed claims over the former Spanish colony on North Africa's Atlantic coast. King Hassan II, 50, one of the West's most reliable allies in the Arab world, has found himself mired in a no-win war of attrition against leftist...