Kyle Mizokami, National Interest: Revealed: How NATO Planned to Win World War Three in Europe
The high cost of stopping the Soviets.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed in 1949 to oppose Soviet expansionism in Western Europe. The end of the war saw the Soviet Union solidify its gains in Eastern Europe, garrisoning countries such as Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and East Germany. NATO was a direct response to the raising of what Winston Churchill deemed the “Iron Curtain.”
At the time, American and Western European planners felt that if war were to break out between West and Stalin’s Russia, it would quite logically take place in Europe. The reality of nuclear weapons, however, meant that the two sides avoided direct confrontation and instead fought a series of proxy wars worldwide. That having been said, for the Soviet Union an invasion of Western Europe carried the biggest risk—and the biggest reward.
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WNU editor: An interesting analysis .... but the error in this plan is that because there was always the over-riding fear that the other side would use nuclear weapons first .... and that fear is more than enough to believe (IMHO) that nuclear weapons would be used as quickly as possible .... probably with 24 hours of such a conflict. On a side note .... flash forwarding to today .... I have to wonder if NATO doctrine has changed since the fall of the Soviet Union, or is it still the same .... NATO's Strategy To Deter The Soviet Union (And Now Russia) Has Been Unchanged Since The Late 1940s (February 20, 2016).
1 comment:
Main problem is the misleading title, I was hoping for a new perspective. There was really no plan to win a continental conventional war, just one to not be trampled too quicky and to stabilize the front somewhere in France or Spain.
Still interesting but not very relevant to today's situation. If some can regret the decline of western military in Europe, they must not forget that Russia is in a far less favorable military situation than USSR at the height of the Cold War.
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