orthodox strategic thinking and policy-making in the USA. In particular, the
long-established policy of backingNATO’sweak conventional defence in
Germany with the threat of central strategic nuclear warfare came to seem
highly non-credible. This was one of the reasons why NATO began to make
real, and ultimately successful, attempts to negotiate conventional force reduc-
tions from the mid-1980s, through the Conference on Security and Co-
operation in Europe, now theOrganziation for Security and Co-opera-
tion in Europe (OSCE), culminating in the Conventional Forces in
Europe (CFE)Treaty of 1990.
Nuclear Parity