This survey of European public opinion on national security issues interprets numerous public opinion polls retrieved from government ministries, commercial agencies and educational institutions. It is a comparative and historical survey of the security challenges faced by Western governments.

Crisis or consensus? - public opinion and national security in Western Europe; the ambiguous politics of parity - power and deterrence in European opinion; collision and collusion - the public, nuclear weapons and arms control; the three pillars of Western security - public opinion and the NATO alliance; old politics and new politics - the public and defence spending; two track - continuity, change and consensus in the politics of European security. Appendices: statistical significance between subsamples; a note on sources of public opinion data.