Report of the head of the Italian defense department’s recent trip to the United States. Of importance was the discussion of NATO’s long-term plan (ten to fifteen years), the strategic defense of the Balkans, the maintenance of the United States’ NATO forces in Europe, and the need to push development of conventional weapons to avoid having to employ nuclear weapons.

The document consists of a report from WEU working group on SDI (in French), and a summary of the WEU member states' positions, and their common efforts to coordinate a unified reaction to the American invitation to participate in SDI.

A brief report about a meeting between Minister of Defense Spadolini and Secretary of Defense Weinberger. The two discuss opportunities for cooperation and interchange in the fields of SDI and conventional armaments.

The document describes initial reactions to the signing of the Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War in Washington. The new agreement raises concerns over the bipolar focus of US-USSR relations, NATO's traditional strategy, and poses questions related to autonomous European defense.

After the installation of INF in Western Europe, NATO's focus has returned to the issue of burden sharing. The US has demonstrated its dissatisfaction with the European contribution, and pressure to strengthen European defense is mounting.

Summarizes the first comments from Min. Foreign Affairs on the agreement Soviet-American for the Prevention of Nuclear War. It is said that the philosophy of this agreement appears to have contradictions with regard to the classic strategy of NATO and diminish the credibility of the latter. Conceptions NATO military will have to be updated in light of recent agreements and ongoing trends around the Russian-American bipolarity. Just because you are at a "secondary" compared to the two supergrandi, Europeans should take the opportunity arising from this new trend to seriously address the issue of their defense. The prospect more desirable at this stage is an acceleration of proesso European unification, including the appearance of its "independent" defense.