TNAG-0476-FCO40-541-Strength-of-garrison-in-Hong-Kong-1974 — Page 17

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undermined the credibility of the trip wire concept. This led

the Alliance to adopt the strategy of flexibility in response.

This strategic concept envisaged that, if deterrence were to fail,

NATO could respond with direct defence (which could include use of

nuclear weapons) to defeat aggression at the level at which the

enemy chose to fight; deliberate escalation; or a general nuclear

response. This flexibility was to "prevent the potential aggressor from prediciting with confidence NATO's specific response to

aggression "and thus lead him to conclude that an unacceptable degree

of risk would attend any attack. Since the new strategy was adopted

in 1967, a good deal of work has been done in NATO on the problem

of the tactical use of nuclear weapons within this concept. The

general thrust of this has been to question whether in military

terms the use of such weapons can compensate for conventional

inferiority on NATO's part. Their value may lie principally in the

scope they offer for indicating to the enemy NATO's resolution and

willingness to escalate as necessary.

15. The United States have recently laid heavy stress on the need

for NATO to maintain a substantial conventional capability, to

ensure that the decision on whether to use nuclear weapons should

not have to be faced at a very early stage in a conflict, and to

allow time for the arrival of US reinforcement forces. But for

the overall Alliance strategy to be effective NATO requires a

credible capability at each level of conflict: the conventional,

the tactical nuclear, and the strategic; and in any part of the

NATO area. While Europe's security ultimately depends on the US

strategic nuclear guarantee, the credibility of the guarantee would

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