Challenges to American National Security in the 1990s

The decade of the 1990s offers a chance to build a new and better international order. What policy choices will this decade pose for the United States? This wide-ranging volume of essays imaginatively addresses these crucial issues. The peaceful revolutions of 1989-1990 in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have swept away the foundations of the Cold War. The Eastern European nations are free; Europe is no longer divided; Germany is united. The Soviet threat to Western Europe is ending with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the withdrawals and asymmetrical cuts of Soviet forces. And U.S.-Soviet rivalry in the Third World is giving way to cooperation in handling conflicts, as in Iraq and elsewhere. Much, of course, remains uncertain and unsettled. What sort of Soviet Union will emerge from the ongoing turmoil, with what political and economic system and what state structure? How far and how soon will the Eastern Euro pean states succeed in developing pluralist democracies and market economies? Are the changes irreversible? Certainly there will be turmoil, backsliding, and failures, but a return to the Cold War hardly seems likely.

Contenu

1. The Setting for American National Security in the 1990s.- Breaking with the Past.- The Soviet Union Retrenches.- European Implications.- East Asian Implications.- Third World Implications.- A World of Greater Complexity.- A Changing International System.- Changes in American Foreign Policy.- 2. Some Considerations on the Soviet-American Relationship in the 1990s.- 3. The New Thinking and Its Limits: Soviet Foreign Policy under Gorbachev.- The New Thinking.- China and the Soviet Union.- The Third World and the Soviet Union.- The United States and the Soviet Union.- Conclusions.- 4. Arms Control and the Future of Nuclear Weapons.- The Arms-Control Context.- Strategic Nuclear Arms Negotiations.- Strategic Defense and Space Arms Control.- Theater Nuclear Arms Negotiations.- Future Nuclear Force Reductions.- Conclusions.- 5. Strategic Nuclear Weapons after START.- Strategic Consequences.- Discussion.- 6. Strategic Arms Control and American Security: Not What the Strategists Had in Mind.- What Is Arms Control All About and Who Says So?.- Personalities, Domestic Politics, and the Sense of History.- 7. Beyond German Unification: The West's Strategic and Arms-Control Policies.- Conventional Forces in Europe.- Nuclear Weapons in Europe.- Conclusions.- The Future of NATO.- The Strategic Purposes of Conventional Forces.- The Role of American Troops.- Conventional Arms Control.- U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe.- Reconstructing the Foundations of Peace.- 8. American Security Policy in the Pacific Rim.- The Elements of the Strategic Situation in East Asia.- Issues for American Policy.- Conclusions.- 9. Why the Third World Matters.- Third World Threats to American Interests.- A Truly Realistic Approach to the Third World.- 10. New Weapons and Old Enmities: Proliferation, RegionalConflict, and Implications for U.S. Strategy in the 1990s.- The Proliferation of Advanced Weaponry.- Advanced Weaponry, Regional Conflict, and Global Spillovers.- A Proliferation Containment Strategy.- Containing the Proliferation Threat.- 11. Military and Civilians Uses of Space: Lingering and New Debates.- Lingering Debates from the 1980s.- New Debates for the 1990s.- Open Skies: The Policy issues and Debates.- The Role of the Media.- Multilateral Verification of Peacekeeping Operations.- 12. Security and Technology.- America's Changing Position in the Global Econonny.- From Spin-Off to Spin-On Technology.- Will American Industrial Decline Reshape the Security Structure?.- 13. Predicting the Future of American Commitments.- Why Americans Care.- Ethnic Considerations.- Changes in Precedent.- Economic Changes.- The Proliferation of Weapons.- Nuclear Proliferation.- Chemical and Biological Warfare Proliferation.- Delivery System Proliferation.- Naval Deployments.- About the Authors.