officials in Western capitals discussed the danger of major East West war .The prescription in NSC68 for the West to match the Soviet Union in conventional arms in Europe was never implemented in large part because of the enormous cost of doing so, particularly with a war on in Korea.Instead, following doctrine articulated by the Eisenhower administration, the United States and its NATO allies relied more on nuclear weapons to balance the conventional and nuclear forces of the Soviet Union and nuclear forces of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite countries.