Hans Günter Brauch – Robert Kennedy (Eds.):

Alternative Conventional DefensePostures in the European Theater

Volume 1: The Military Balanceand Domestic Constraints

With a Foreword by General Andrew J. Goodpaster

(New York - Bristol, PA - Washington, DC, London:
A member of the Taylor & Francis Group)
1990, 220 pp., ISBN 0-8448-1598-5
$ 45.00 - £ 32.00

This book is organised in 3 parts and contains 10 chapters, biographies of the editors and authors and an index. After an introduction by both editors Part I on The Changing East-West Political and Strategic Dimensions and U.S.-Soviet Relations in the 1990s include chapters by Daniel S. Papp (Atlanta, USA) on "The Changing Face of U.S.-Soviet Relations: An American Perspective", by Sergey M. Rogov (Moscow, USSR) on: "The Changing Face of Soviet-American Relations: A Soviet perspective".

Part II on: Assessing the Military Balance in Central Europe contains 2 chapters by Robert Kennedy (then Atlanta, USA, now Director of the Marshall Center in Garmisch-Partenkirchen) on "The Soviet/Warsaw Pact Nonnuclear Threat and the Balance of Conventional Forces in Europe" and by Lutz Unterseher (Bonn, Germany) on: "A Note on the Intricacies of Military Force Assessment).

Part III deals in six chapters with the Domestic Constraints for the Defense of Central Europe with contributions by John M. Weinstein (Washington, DC, USA) on: "Manpower Problems and Prospects Confronting US Armed Forces through the Year 2000", by Bernd Grass (Bonn, Germany) on: "The Personal Shortage in the Bundeswehr until the Year 2000", by Herschel Kanter (Washington, DC, USA) on: "Budgetary Constraints on the US Defence Contributions for Central Europe", by Hartmut Bebermeyer (Bonn, Germany) on "The Fiscal Crisis of the Bundeswehr", by Jo L. Husbands (Washington, DC, USA) on: "The Domestic Challenge: US Public Support for America's Contributions to NATO" and by Wolfgang R. Vogt (Hamburg, Germany) on "The Crisis of acceptance of the Security Policy With Military Means in the Federal Republic of Germany).

This book went to print in August 1989 just prior to the fall of 1989 in which the East-West Conflict came to an end and many of the problems of this book were solved in a way none of the authors could foresee at the time of writing. Nevertheless, the chapters offer a snapshot of the security debates in the USA and Germany with a Russian contribution. During the 1990s, Prof. Sergei Rogov succeeded Prof. Arbatov as Director of the Russian Institute on US and Canadian studies.

hgb016; Language: English; Areas: conventional defence, manpower, public opinion, defence spending; Region: Germany, Soviet Union, United States.