1st Edition

Military Exercises and Threat Perception in Europe NATO, Russia, and the Politics of War Games, 1975–2018

By Thomas Hughes Copyright 2026
204 Pages
by Routledge

204 Pages
by Routledge

This book explores the politics of military exercises in Europe between 1975 and 2018, revealing how NATO, the Soviet Union, and Russia have used exercises as political tools and how these activities shaped and reflected their perception of the threat environment. Drawing on extensive archival research and expert interviews, this work offers an examination of (and reflection on) European... Read more

Introduction

Section 1: Openness, Confidence, and Duplicity

Chapter 1: The Political Exercise Emerges: An Introduction to Military Exercises and Signalling

Chapter 2: Foundations Laid: The Emergence of Confidence-Building Measures and the Helsinki Final Act

Chapter 3: The Stockholm Document: A New Interpretation of ‘Security’ 1980–1989

Chapter 4: Harmony and Discord in the City of Music: The Negotiation of the Vienna Documents

Chapter 5: Turbulent Undercurrents: The Negotiations of CSBMs in Europe, 1994–2013

Chapter 6: Wherefore Art Thou, Confidence? Exploring the absence of new CSBMs in Europe

Chapter 7: The Missing Span: Challenges and Contradictions in the C(S)BM Regime

Section 2: Smoke, Mirrors, and the Fall: Soviet and NATO Exercises, 1975–1990

Chapter 8: Feeling the Heat: The Pattern and Structure of Exercises, 1975–1990

Chapter 9: Through the Looking Glass: NATO and Soviet Responses to Exercises

Section 3: The Calm and the Storm, 1991–2013

Chapter 10: A Slow Return to a New Russia: The Pattern and Function of NATO and Russian Exercises 1991–2013

Chapter 11: Betwixt and Between: NATO and Russian Responses to Exercises

Section 4: Dangerous Unpredictability: Russian and NATO Exercises, 2014–2018

Chapter 12: The New is Old Again: The Pattern and Structure of NATO and Russian Exercises, 2014–2018

Chapter 13: Stilted Conversation: The Function of Russian and NATO Exercises

Chapter 14: Rough Communication: NATO and Russian Responses to Exercises

Section 5: Chasing Shadows in the Dark

Chapter 15: Exercises, Confidence-Building, and Misaligned Threat Perception

Biography

Thomas Hughes is an Assistant Professor at Mount Allison University and Deputy Director of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba, Canada.