War Plans and Alliances in the Cold War: Threat Perceptions in the East and West

This Important new volume reviews the threat perceptions, military doctrines, and war plans of both the NATO alliance and the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War, as well as the position of the neutrals, from the post-Cold War perspective. Based on previously unknown archival evidence from both East and West, the 12 essays in this collection focus on the potential European battlefield rather than the strategic competition between the superpowers. They present conclusions about the nature of the Soviet threat that previously could only be speculated about and analyze the interaction between military matters and politics in the alliance management on both sides, with implications for the present crisis of the Western alliance. By focusing on the potential European battlefield rather than the strategic competition between the superpowers, the book explores the Cold War roots of the different American and European approaches to security. The conclusions about the strengths and weaknesses of the two allianceshighlight the importance of political, rather than merely military, determinants of the cohesion of NATO in the post-Cold War security environment. This new book will be of much interest to students of the Cold War, strategic history and international relations history.