Playing Nuclear Poker

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imperious, imperialist villain who is thrusting upon the peace-loving West Europeans weapons that they neither want nor need. It is one of the many ironies of the whole episode that it was the West Europeans who originally asked for a NATO buildup, and that the U.S. agreed to proceed with the deployment program despite strong misgivings about its military and political rationale.

The U.S. had stationed long-range missiles in Europe two decades ago, but they were soon removed because they seemed redundant and excessively vulnerable, given the ability of the U.S. to hit any target in the U.S.S.R. with intercontinental ballistic missiles, bombers based in the U.S. and missiles launched from nuclear submarines. These weapons constituted the U.S.'s central, or strategic, arsenal—the triad. Then one of West Germany's brightest up-and-coming defense intellectuals and politicians, Helmut Schmidt, argued strenuously in the Bundestag that America's own deterrent of last resort constituted a nuclear umbrella of "extended deterrence" for Western Europe, sheltering NATO's first lines of defense on and around the Continent.

But this was in the days of the U.S.'s uncontested strategic nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union. in the late '60s and early '70s, that comfortable margin in intercontinental weaponry gave way to parity, or rough equivalence. At the same time, the Soviets continued their buildup in military manpower and conventional forces within Europe until the Warsaw Pact had a considerable numerical edge over NATO.

European and American defense planners alike began to worry about : the concept of "extended deterrence" breaking down and the defense of Europe becoming "decoupled" from that of the U.S. Imagining future crises, they feared that the Soviets might be able to use their by now vast strategic power to hold America's central forces in check while they advanced bishops and knights against weaker NATO pieces on the European chessboard.

Was it any longer plausible that a Soviet armored blitzkrieg into West Germany would trigger a U.S. retaliatory blow from North Dakota, since that in turn might trigger a counterretaliation against the U.S.?

Would an American President risk New York in defense of Hamburg?

Enter the SS-20. It was first deployed early in 1977. It was a replacement for the SS-4s and SS-5s, with which the Soviets had been menacing Europe for decades. The SS-20 was therefore not a new threat in that its targets more or less matched those of the old SS-4s and SS-5s that were destined for retirement. But the SS-20 is an immensely more capable weapon. It is mobile, highly accurate and dauntingly destructive, with three independently targetable warheads. (SS-20 is its NATO designation. The Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces innocently dubbed it the Pioneer, in honor of the U.S.S.R.'s version of Cub Scouts and Campfire Girls.)

Schmidt, by then the Chancellor of West Germany and the most knowledgeable and articulate spokesman for European fears of decoupling, saw a sinister connection between the Soviet introduction of the SS-20 and what he regarded as the shortsighted, selfish American conduct of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II).

The SS-20 had a range (3,100 miles) just shy of what would qualify it as a strategic weapon. Therefore it