NATO's Dual-Track Decision

Thirtieth Anniversary of NATO's Dual-Track Decision

A U.S. Army photograph of the mobile Pershing II deployed in an unidentified woodlands location. (Photo from U.S. Army Redstone Arsenal Web site)

The Road to the Euromissiles Crisis and the End of the Cold War

Washington, D.C., December 10, 2009 - Thirty years ago, on 12 December 1979, NATO defense and foreign ministers made a landmark decision designed to unify the alliance, but which also contributed to the collapse of détente and helped provide an agenda for the end of the Cold War. On the anniversary of the NATO "dual-track" decision that linked deployments of U.S. long-range theater nuclear forces (LRTNF) to proposals for negotiations with Moscow over those and Soviet forces, the National Security Archive publishes for the first time a selection of declassified U.S. documents that record some of the key developments in the U.S. and NATO decision-making processes.

NATO leaders saw the "dual-track" decision as a response to Soviet long-range forces targeting Europe and as a way ultimately to roll them back, yet the Soviet leadership saw the NATO plan as a threatening escalation of the nuclear arms race. Indeed, some in Moscow saw the NATO decision as the "last drop" that made them feel they had nothing to lose by invading Afghanistan...>>>>>