Special Section: Paperkrieg in an Era of Peace

ON the walls of SHAPE headquarters near Brussels, battle maps pinpoint the location of the 1,000,000 troops of the seven-nation Warsaw Pact, as well as the 4,200 Soviet tactical and medium-range nuclear weapons pointed at the heart of Western Europe. On the walls of the Warsaw Pact Command Headquarters in Moscow, other maps pinpoint the location of NATO'S 580,000 troops, as well as its 7,000 nuclear weapons.

No one, except perhaps a few of the rival generals, seriously expects that those weapons will ever be fired or those troops committed to battle. In fact, most Europeans regard the paperkrieg as a bit...

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