A Grand Strategy for the West: The Anachronism of National Strategies in an Interdependent World

Timed to coincide with the Reagan-Gorbachev summit meeting in November, here are the Henry L. Stimson Lectures delivered at Yale by the former chancellor of West Germany. Schmidt's subtitle sums up his view that the West desperately needs to repair its present disarray, which finds Europe politically leaderless and dominated by the ""high-handed unilateral decisionmaking'' of the U.S. He is frank about the perils posed by the ``second Cold War'' in which the superpowers seem engaged, and argues for a Western buildup of conventional forces with simultaneous negotiations for real nuclear-arms reductions with the U.S.S.R. Schmidt is statesmanlike and balanced in his proposals for a grand strategy, discussing economic and ecological issues as well as military-political perils. He views the U.S. budget deficit as a ``time bomb,'' and Reagan's Star Wars plan as stemming from an obsession with a ``worst case'' scenario, to which Schmidt responds with his own 19-point ``best case'' proposal. November 20