‘Victory in a Nuclear War? A Comparison of NATO and WTO War Aims and Strategies’

Heuser, B. (1998) ‘Victory in a Nuclear War? A Comparison of NATO and WTO War Aims and Strategies’. Contemporary European History , 7 (3). pp. 311-328.

Abstract/Summary

Given the danger of the unbearable catastrophe of nuclear war, NATO in the mid-1950s abandoned any war aim of achieving victory in an all-out war with the Soviet Union or the Warsaw Treaty Organisation. Instead, it adopted the war aim of a cease-fire or war termination. By contrast, the WTO clung on to the war aim of victory - expressed even in terms of the survival of slightly more Soviet citizens than NATO citizens, after unprecedented losses of life in nuclear exchanges - until the mid-1980s when under Gorbachev the concept of victory in nuclear war was abandoned.