The Strained Alliance: U.S.-European Relations From Nixon to Carter

Editors Thomas A. Schwartz and Matthias Schulz will discuss findings from their most recent book The Strained Alliance: U.S.-European Relations from Nixon to Carter. Joining them will be Ambassador Jonathan Dean, former U.S representative to the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction negotiations.

Using a wide array of recently declassified archival materials from the United States and Western Europe, Schwartz and Schulz offer new insights into the changing dynamics of transatlantic relations during the era of detente (1969–1980). Their volume reveals why bitter conflicts developed between the U.S. and its European allies, and how European integration evolved less as a consequence of Washington's support than as a result of America's relative decline and growing U.S.-European discord. Taking into account the developments in various bilateral and multilateral settings, such as the European Community, the Helsinki process, and the G-7 summits, the volume's contributors show that a common alliance strategy has always been a difficult undertaking, often the result of bitter confrontation and painful compromises.

Thomas A. Schwartz is a professor of history at Vanderbilt University where he specializes in the interaction between domestic politics and foreign policy, transnational coalitions and alliance politics, the role of the American presidency in alliance leadership, and the new international history of the Cold War. Schwartz's research has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and he is co-editor, most recently, of The Strained Alliance: U.S.-European Relations from Nixon to Carter.

Matthias Schulz has been professor of history of international relations at the University of Geneva since 2007. Prior to that he taught at the University of Mannheim, the University of Rostock and Vanderbilt University, where he also led the Center for European Studies. He is the author of numerous journal articles and three monographs, and most recently co-edited The Strained Alliance: U.S.-European Relations from Nixon to Carter with Thomas A. Schwartz.

Ambassador Jonathan Dean joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1949. In the middle fifties he helped to establish the new Federal German armed forces and helped with German entry into NATO. He was a U.S. negotiator for the 1971 quadripartite agreement on Berlin, which ended three decades of dangerous East-West wrangling over the city. From 1973-1981 he was deputy U.S. Representative and then U.S. Representative to the NATO-Warsaw Pact force reduction negotiations in Vienna (the MBFR talks). In 1982 he joined the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as resident associate for arms control and international security issues, and from 1984-2006 served as advisor on arms control and international security issues to the Union of Concerned Scientists. He is the author of several books on European security, and has a Ph.D. in political science from the George Washington University.