Lisbon, Portugal. NATO meets and decides that by the end of the year, member states must provide 42 ready-to-use divisions, and 45 additional divisions ready to be mobilized within 30 days. Soon after, the latter figure will be increased to 48, for a total of 90 divisions. This is to be able to counter a potential Soviet attack with conventional forces. However, this objective will never be achieved in the history of the Atlantic Alliance. Indeed, the intense use of technology will dramatically transform NATO’s tactics and strategy and will make mass armies lose some of their meaning. In 1953, the target is reduced to 66 divisions. Furthermore, European nations will move away from compulsory conscription, and cost constraints will place severe restrictions on the actual number of operational divisions. Therefore, NATO strategy will have to rely on containing the Soviet intervention in the first one or two weeks in central and northern Germany, before eventually moving on to the use of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lisbon, Portugal. NATO meets and decides that by the end of the year, member states…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-625180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-as-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n