Abstrakt
NATO was born as a nuclear alliance with nuclear weapons hoped to be compensating for the Soviet conventional superiority. Fifty years later, NATO envisages the Global Zero as one of its goals and has included this vision into its strategic concept.
This chapter examines how the Alliance would look like should it be achieved. It briefly reviews NATO's nuclear past and present missions and challenges in order to explore the implications for a nuclear weapons-free future.
Certainly NATO would lose some military hardware, as would, presumably, its adversaries. But in fact, the former may be better for NATO's cohesion than the latter.
The chapter highlights that the global zero will end the heated discussions about the future of NATO's non-strategic nuclear weapons. Global zero will also disarm many of NATO's perceived adversaries.
Thus the chapter argues, as long as the Alliance remains coherent in the nuclear weapons-free world, it is likely to enjoy considerable conventional superiority stemming from its technological advantage and superior force employment doctrine. However, it will face intrinsic challenges including the issue of necessary credibility assurance of the verification measures and enforcement of the global zero, should the cheater arise.