Surviving the Soviet Missile Threat.

This article discusses the challenges faced by NATO during the Cold War. It highlights two main challenges: the Soviet Union's aggressive behavior and nuclear disarmament proposals. The article focuses on the period of the late 1970s when the Soviet Union expanded its nuclear arsenal and developed a new intermediate-range nuclear missile. NATO responded with a dual-track proposal, offering disarmament negotiations with the Soviets while also deploying nuclear missiles if the talks failed. The Soviet Union launched a propaganda campaign to oppose the deployment of new weapons, which led to public opposition in Western European countries. Despite the pressure, Western European parliaments voted in favor of stationing U.S. missiles. The article also discusses the subsequent disarmament talks between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which resulted in the INF Treaty in 1987. The author argues that Gorbachev's repeated offers to negotiate and disarm could have undermined NATO if the Cold War had not ended. The article concludes by stating that NATO was not destroyed by the debates over the Euromissiles and that the end of the Cold War presented a greater challenge to the alliance. The author also mentions the recent threat posed by Russian aggression and the potential withdrawal of the United States from NATO under President Donald Trump. [Extracted from the article]