An Enhanced Non-Provocative Defense in Europe: Attrition of Aggressive Armored Forces by Local Militias

Alvin M. Saperstein
Additional contact information
Alvin M. Saperstein: Dept. of Physics and Center for Peace and Conflict Studies, Wayne State University

Journal of Peace Research, 1987, vol. 24, issue 1, 47-60

Abstract: The two part system — NATO and WTO — is presently locked into a mutually provoked escalating arms race. The result is economically and socially wasteful and a mortal threat to both as well as the rest of the earth's inhabitants. Given the mutual distrust, a form of defense must be found which is both non-provocative and effective and which can be established unilaterally, if necessary. Such a possible scheme for the 'tinder-box' region of Central Europe, where the two powers confront each other, consists of one or two 'depletion zones': strips parallel to the interzone frontier depleted of heavy, conventional, necessarily provocative, offensive military systems but saturated with widely dispersed, effectively armed, civilian militia groups. If aggression should occur, in spite of such a deterrence posture, the invader would suffer significant attrition losses in attempting to penetrate the zone(s) before battle could be joined with the defender's conventional military forces. Additional stopping power comes from lightly armed frontier defenses and long-range, locally guided anti-tank missiles. The results depend both upon the new technologies of fixed, hidden, long-range and man-portable, short-range, precision guided missiles and upon 'new' forms of incorporation and organization of the civilian population for defense. Aside from bemg effective and non-provocative, such a European security stance is economically and socially viable, functions as a clearcut decision making mechanism in a turbulent political world, allows the citizens of the European democracies to feel significantly responsible for their own security and well-being, and serves as a positive political signal to the rest of the world.

Date: 1987
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/24/1/47.abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:joupea:v:24:y:1987:i:1:p:47-60

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Peace Research from Peace Research Institute Oslo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().