The paper discusses and analyzes negotiations between the Warsaw Pact and NATO nations to reduce military forces in Central Europe. These negotations have taken place in Vienna since 1973. Material is organized in three major sections. Section I offers a general survey of the political and strategic context within which the negotiations have taken place. Information in this section illustrates how external events have had a dramatic impact on the negotiations. These external events include agreement on the Salt II Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union in June 1979, the decision of the NATO ministers to modernize NATO's nuclear force, and the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union in 1979. Information is also presented on competing objectives of the NATO and Warsaw Pact participants, which have sometimes hindered negotiations. For example, whereas each side wishes, on the one hand, to stabilize the military balance at the conventional level in Central Europe, each side also wishes to increase the limitations on the military forces of the other side. Section II focuses on major issues of the negotiations, with emphasis on changes in positions that were made by both sides from the opening of the negotiations through 1979. In the final section, several conclusions regarding the relationship between East-West detente and bargaining within the Vienna force negotiations are offered, including that there was a significant trend from 1973 to 1979 for detente to fade and for conflict to increase; in external events, the behaviors of the two alliances tended to mirror one another in an action-reaction pattern; and within the Vienna negotiations there were few strong patterns of mutual reciprocity. A content analysis of verbatim transcripts and a summary quantitative analysis of interactions between parties in the negotiations conclude the paper. (DB)