The Strategic Studies Center of the Stanford Research Institute conducts a program aimed at alternative approaches to U.S. problems in foreign, defense, and international economic policies. This program focuses much attention on the political and military problems of the Western Alliance and helps maintain a nongovernmental dialogue with key European political-military experts. This dialogue includes the search for strategic concepts and supporting force postures keyed to the requirements of the 1970s.

In this volume, General Andre Beaufre (French Army, Retired), long involved with the strategies of Western defense and security, examines the current status and future directions of West European deterrence and defense, and draws attention to some of the most basic and vital questions of present-day Western security policy.

These are: how to sustain extended deterrence in Europe in an age of superpower strategic parity; how to adapt conventional force structures and tactics to changing conditions of offensive and defensive warfare and military technology; how to define the deterrent and defensive roles of nuclear weapons in Western security; and what the implications of these factors will be for U.S. and West European national military force postures in the future.