Europe and the Superpowers
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About the Book and Editors
Relations between the superpowers and the nations of Eastern and Western Europe are especially tenuous as the midpoint of the 1980s approaches. The contributors to this volume assess the current political, economic, and military dimensions of Europes international relations and consider the prospects for change, focusing on the role of the rival alliance systems (NATO and the Warsaw Pact), Soviet conceptions of the future of Europe, U.S. goals concerning the maintenance of NATO, and Europes assessment of its own interests and objectives. The book concludes by addressing the impact of Soviet and East European domestic developments on present and future East-West relations.
Steven Bethlen is the director of the Academy for Politics and Current Events of the Hanns-Seidel Foundation in Munich. His publications include Osthandel in der Krise . Ivan Volgyes is a professor of political science at the University of Nebraska. His publications include Hungary: A Nation of Contradictions (Westview).
First published 1985 by Westview Press
Published 2018 by Routledge
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Copyright 1985 by Taylor & Francis
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Library of Congress cataloging in Publication Data
Europe and the superpowers.
(A Westview replica edition)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Europe--National security--Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. North Atlantic Treaty Organization--Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Warsaw Treaty Organization--Addresses, essays, lectures. 4. United States--Military relations--Europe--Addresses, essays, lectures. 5. Soviet Union--Military relations--Europe--Addresses, essays, lectures. 6. Europe--Military relations--United States--Addresses, essays, lectures. 7. Europe--Military relations--soviet Union--Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Bethlen, Stefan, Graf, 1946- . II. Volgyes, Ivan, 1936- .
UA646.E923 1985 355.03304 84-19600
ISBN 0-86531-887-5
ISBN 13: 978-0-367-01997-6 (hbk)
As far as the prospects for peace and prosperity in the world were concerned, the decade of the 1980s did not augur well. In the US an American president came to power with the avowed program of challenging Soviet expansionism. In the Soviet Union, a sick and weak First Secretary was hampered by age and disease, inactive and incapable of decisive moves. In Western Europe, stormy electioneering reached heights of bitterness between conservatives and liberals, threatening fragile domestic political balances. And in Eastern Europe, the Polish malaise threatened to dismantle a bankrupt economic system teetering at the edge of disaster.
Nor did the military sphere provide a much better perspective for the combattants of East and West. The United States just began a large-scale modernization campaign to catch up with the advantages the USSR gained during the previous decade. The Soviet Union was going ahead with the deployment of medium-range missiles targeted at Western Europe, in spite of being bogged down in Afghanistan without seeing a light at the end of the tunnel of military involvement there. The forces of NATO were planning to increase their expenditures for the defense of the alliance system both on the battlefield and in technical areas, increases the Soviets could not expect readily to meet. And the Warsaw Pact, as usual, looked to the USSR for a decisive role to play in foreign military policy.
The crux of these conflicts, of course, was the competition between the United States and the USSR, the two true superpowers of the world, for exertion of their influence in Europe. While it was also a competition between the two systems, that of communism and liberal democracy, the contest between the superpowers was directed specifically at the maintenance of the spheres of influence that were determined during the various peace conferences of 1943-45. Although both superpowers were hopeful that the other parts of Europe would come under their influence -- and while both sides were wooing Europe and the Europeans -- neither power would be willing to risk an all-out war for accomplishing such a venture, realizing the risks of thermonuclear disaster that could possibly result from truly adventurous policies.
