Last Great Nuclear Debate

America, Britain and West Germany faced many deployment and operational dilemmas with NATO's short-range nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Long-standing decision-making and planning habits, and rapidly thawing East-West relations stimulated intense nuclear debate in the 1980s. This text documents the divergent reactions to a changing security environment which led a newly assertive West Germany to break out of previous foreign policy constraints, signalling both the end of a strategic era and the precurser to a unified Germany.