What is it about?
NATO abandoned the hope that it could win a nuclear war in the mid-1950s, while the Warsaw Treaty Organisation only dropped victory from its exercises in the early 1980s. Instead of aiming for "victory", NATO hoped to be able to impose a ceasefire, and it was hoped that negotiations could then lead to an armistice.
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Why is it important?
This article establishes that NATO's aims, should deterrence break down, would have been much more pacific than those of the Warsaw Treaty Organisation (WTO), at least in the late 1950s, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and until the WTO gave up its aim of victory in the early 1980s. This article is based on original documents from both NATO and the WTO.
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This page is a summary of: Victory in a Nuclear War? A Comparison of NATO and WTO War Aims and Strategies, Contemporary European History, November 1998, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s0960777300004264.
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