New Defence Strategies for the 1990's: From Confrontation to Coexistence

Philip Webber, co-author of "Crisis Over Cruise" and "London After the Bomb", presents a case for defensive deterrence - a safer, cheaper, "greener" alternative to current military policy. An alternative which, building on arms control, could enable defence spending to be cut by 30 per cent (200,000,000,000 dollars a year) - 6,000,000,000 pounds from the UK defence budget alone. Money which the author argues provides a great opportunity for increased spending on pressing environmental problems and domestic spending needs. The author presents his case through scenarios and analysis of an often hidden military world: secret contingency plans to fight a war in Europe with nuclear weapons; aggressive conventional strategies; new hi-tec "sci-fi" arms projects costing hundreds of millions of pounds; he reveals large discrepancies in official arms figures. This book addresses arguments surrounding defence reforms and arms reductions which are likely to be at the heart of the defence and disarmament debate for the 1990's.

Table of Contents:
Why arms control is not enough; defensive deterrence; economic and environmental security; the changing international environment. Part 1 The present danger: the "Fog" of war; scenario - war by mistake; problems with nuclear strategies - the nuclear arsenals, misperception and misadventure, aggressive and destabilizing strategies, conventional forces and strategies - the nuclear factor. Part 2 New weapons new strategies: scenario - somewhere in East Germany; the spectre haunting Moscow; the armed bureaucracy - allies and enemies, summary and conclusions, implications for an alternative; pandora's arsenal - new weapons and strategies, stopping the blitzkrieg, attacking follow-on forces (FOFA), new FOFA weapons, battlefield command and control, new Soviet technology, FOFA new weapons and conventional stability, new weapons in an alternative military strategy. Part 3 Towards a new direction in defence: scenario - the spectres haunting NATO; the numbers game - the impact of negotiated arms reductions, the balance of forces, behind the Soviet threat, summary and conclusions, the worst case; battlefield Europe - forward defence, who would win?, the implications of a conventional arms reduction treaty; non-nuclear defence - basic principles - defensive defence, costs of offence and defence; non-nuclear defence - a system for Europe - the defence zones, specialization, costs and resources, restructuring defence; scenario - the spectres haunting NATO revisited; the transition - defensive deterrence - how much de-nuclearization?, defensive deterrence - answering the objections, the case for defensive deterrence. Appendix: The topology of crisis stability and the arms control process.