The World - News from Jan. 21, 1988

Basic counts of conventional forces in Europe showing the West at a severe disadvantage do not reflect the fact that there is “a rough and uneasy balance” between the two sides, a U.S. Senate report said. It asserted that emphasizing “bean counts” of tanks and other weapons could foster a mistaken belief that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is hopelessly outmatched and leave the West vulnerable to political blackmail. Critics of the intermediate nuclear forces treaty have said that eliminating ground-launched medium-range nuclear weapons from Europe could leave NATO vulnerable to Soviet attack because the Soviet Bloc has a numerical advantage in a variety of conventional weapons.