This book, first published in 1986, analyses a number of emerging, enduring and neglected issues that affected European security and the stability of the Atlantic Alliance at the end of the Cold War. It provides a comprehensive review of the major political, social and economic issues that shaped the course of European security. It offers a thorough assessment of such critical questions as European views of the US Strategic Defense Initiative, the contribution of new technologies and tactics to NATO's conventional defence capabilities, and domestic factors that influenced security policy. It also provides original analysis of a number of issues, such as economic dimensions of security, the quest for a European defence identity, and protection of Western interests outside the NATO area. It provides a review of the nuclear question and of the German security debate in the aftermath of the initial US INF missile deployments.