The Primacy of Alliance: Deterrence and European Security
Since the end of the Cold War, the international security environment has been transformed and nuclear weapons have been marginalized in the West. However, the NATO security policies remain almost unchanged: deterrence is still considered as a principle guiding the Atlantic Alliance, even though the actual policy statements lack target, direction and urgency.
Questioning the credibility of deterrence in Europe and its future, this text recalls that it lies first and foremost with solidarity and political cohesion among members of the Alliance, and only secondly with the threat of nuclear retaliation. As a consequence, the decreasing salience of nuclear weapons in the West seems less worrying for the robustness of deterrence in Europe than a long-term and lasting shift of US foreign policy away from the European continent.
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The Primacy of Alliance: Deterrence and European Security
Security Studies Center
Heir to a tradition dating back to the founding of Ifri, the Security Studies Center provides public and private decision-makers as well as the general public with the keys to understanding power relations and contemporary modes of conflict as well as those to come. Through its positioning at the juncture of politics and operations, the credibility of its civil-military team and the wide distribution of its publications in French and English, the Center for Security Studies constitutes in the French landscape of think tanks a unique center of research and influence on the national and international defense debate.
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