CWIHP is pleased to announce the international conference The Euromissiles Crisis and the End of the Cold War, 1977-1987, organized by the Machiavelli Center for Cold War Studies (CIMA), the Craxi Foundation, CWIHP, the George Washington University's National Security Archive, and the Universities of Paris I (Pantheon Sorbonne) and Paris III (Sorbonne Nouvelle), in cooperation with Bundeskanzler Willy Brandt Stiftung.
Visit the conference website, www.machiavellicenter.net/dualtrackinrome/, for more information.
The Euromissiles crisis was a decisive moment in the history of the Cold war. It came at a moment when Détente was rapidly deteriorating and tensions were quickly building up across the globe. Many historians have argued that together with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan two weeks later, the December 1979 NATO dual track decision marked a watershed between the previous period of Détente and the following return to a harsh confrontation between the blocs. At the same time, the formal ending of the crisis with the 1987 Treaty of Washington ushered in an unprecedented era of improved relations between the superpowers and it may well have helped unleash those forces that brought about the final collapse of the Soviet bloc a few years later.
The aim of this conference is to explore the origins, unfolding, and consequences, of the Euromissiles affair within the wider framework of the last phase of the Cold War in Europe.