You're right...

... but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.

Your point is that everyone benefits from cooperating within the framework of NATO once the Soviets are rolling tanks across the inter-German border. My point is that the success of NATO (and the time line for that success) depends on how ready we are for the invasion before it happens. Any delay, any confusion, delays or hampers our efforts to hold them back and maintain the status quo.

France, Spain and Italy did nothing to detract from the air strike (on Libya) once it was done... but their inability or unwillingness to cooperate before hand hampered US efforts... yes or no? Furthermore this isn't a case of US interests going counter to NATO interests, either. The bomb blew up in German territory, wounding French servicemen as well as killing Americans, and there was evidence of links to bomb makers in Italy found during the investigation. This really was an attack on multiple NATO members... yet only the US and UK saw the threat and were willing to act.

From 1981 on, the political view of the civilian leadership of Europe has moved more and more to a pacifistic position... further and further to the "left", in other words. There are no more "Maggie" Thatchers working from #10 Downing Street. No more Mitterrands, no more Kohls, and there aren't going to be any more Reagans either. We are talking about a time when all these leaders were in power... but the climate they worked in had already begun to change. Anti-nuclear demonstrations raged through Europe, anti-American parades were held in towns that depended on US troops to defend them from Soviet attack, and any action taken by the US against perceived aggression was questioned to the point of oblivion (Libya, for example).

Soviet victory depended on rapid advance and almost total surprise... but ANY delay or confusion on the part of NATO equals the same thing. I agree 100% that once the Soviets fire that first shot... all of Western Europe is behind the US all the way. I'm asking what the chances are that, leading up to that first shot, someone in France, or the Netherlands, or Italy decide that there is a "political or diplomatic option" that hasn't been followed... and doesn't cooperate fully with the NATO plan of forward defense, causing a delay in something as vital to our every effort as "REFORGER" or our surface fleet resupply efforts. THAT is the "question" of NATO success that I am bringing up.

My conviction that the war would be won by the West shouldn't surprise anyone, because I think history shows us the facts. The USSR couldn't have waged a long-term war in Europe, and the longer they waited to start it (after the invasion of Afghanistan), then the less time they had to fight it. This is simple, economic FACT. The problem is that Soviet doctrine called for the use of armed actions to counter failing economic planning (Brezhnev used this to convince the rest of the Politburo to invade Afghanistan in the first place)... so the worse things got in Russia and the east, the more likely an action against the West must have seemed. NATO would win a long war... but the less prepared we were, the more costly the victory would be. Western Europe was not in favor of allowing that war to be fought at all (with the exception of the UK, I understand) and all the political leadership in the world wouldn't have made the voting public any happier about the prospect.

Anyway... that's MY opinion. No one has to agree at all.