Disengagement Zones: A Step Towards Meaningful Defence?

To raise the nuclear threshold in Europe, several suggestions have been made to remove battlefield nuclear weapons a certain distance east and west of the dividing line in Central Europe. Concurrent conventional arrangements are envisaged: linking the withdrawal of nuclear weapons to an agreement on mutual (balanced) force reductions (M(B)FR); unilateral action to compensate for Western conventional inferiority, as is often argued in the West; or withdrawing major conventional weapons suited for offensive uses from the zone, as is argued in this paper.A combined nuclear and conventional disengagement may not only raise the nuclear threshold but also, at the same time, enhance the effectiveness of conventional defence. Possible restrictions are discussed in some detail, and related to new concepts of conventional defence which have attracted increasing attention and support in recent years: the concept of territorial defence, primarily developed in the Federal Republic and in Austria under the common designation of "Raumverteidigung", and the Airland concept, epitomi zed in a new Field Manual for the US Army.