in their identification of worldterrorismas essentially mono-causal and tied
to fundamentalist Islam.
Conventional Arms
Conventional war is war waged only with non-nuclear weaponry, though the
definition sometimes also excludes any form of chemical or biological weap-
ons. The concept involves ambiguities and even possible dangers, since it
makes the distinction between two ways of creating explosions the main
criterion of escalation in warfare. In particular, the distinction invests what
are often called ‘battlefield’ nuclear weapons—small-yield nuclear shells and
short-range missiles—with a symbolic significance: because they are nuclear
rather than ‘conventional’, they might be felt to entitle an enemy to respond
with more powerful nuclear missiles, even though the ‘battlefield’ weapons
might have had hardly more impact than a heavy ‘conventional’ bombing raid.
Some modern conventional weapons, for example air-fuel explosion bombs,
are actually more devastating than an equivalent small nuclear weapon, but if
the distinction between conventional and nuclear were regarded as crucial, a
heavy attack on a civilian population by conventional bombers would not
entitle the defenders to use nuclear weapons in defence. It is unlikely that the
distinction is regarded as a vital one by professional military thinkers, though it
is of considerable political relevance; some anti-nuclear politicians would
advocate the maintenance of massive conventional military strength as an
alternative. It is publicly acknowledged that NATO planning was based on
the use of low-yield, ‘battlefield’ nuclear weapons within the first few days of
any conflict with theWarsaw Pact, principally because of the apparent
conventional superiority of the Eastern bloc from the late 1960s until its
collapse in the wake of the anti-communist revolutions at the end of the 1980s.
But this was never taken to imply that the Western powers would be prepared
to launch a major strategic nuclearfirst strike. Nevertheless, the perhaps
arbitrary conventional–nuclear distinction is now deeply rooted in the strategic
and political vocabulary. As the likelihood of major nuclear war declined, far
more careful thinking was carried out about conventional weapons. One
result, enshrined partly in theConventional Forces in Europe (CFE)
negotiations and treaty was to try to distinguish between offensive and
defensive conventional weapons and tactics, and this distinction, theoretically
even more difficult, is likely to take the place of the conventional–nuclear
dichotomy as of most vital concern.
Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty
Discussions about imposing limitations, and preferably reductions, on troop
levels and some limits on specifiedconventional armsbegan in Vienna in
Conventional Arms