Abstract
The contributors to the present volume have established a continuum of interpretations from the few pointing to the conflicts between the United States and Western Europe to the many emphasizing the broad consensus on the two sides of the Atlantic. Both elements have obviously existed. Or, as Josef Joffe puts it, ‘There has been no end to quarrel — and no end to alliance’.1 My task, then, is to establish some sort of overall balance between the elements of conflict and those of cooperation. Yet, as already indicated, I think the latter side has indeed been not only the most striking, but also the most neglected.
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Notes
Josef Joffe, The Limited Partnership. Europe, the United States, and the Burdens of Alliance (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1987), p. xi.
For my own analysis of the formation of NATO, see America, Scandinavia, and the Cold War 1945–1949 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980) particularly pp. 167–97.
Escot Reid, Time of Fear and Hope: The Making of the North Atlantic Treaty 1947–1949 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977).
Georges-Henri Soutou, ‘France’, in David Reynolds, ed., The Origins of the Cold War in Europe. International Perspectives (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 100.
Pierre Melandri’s chapter in the present collection. For a good overview of American-European relations with considerable emphasis given to the role of France, see Alfred Grosser, The Western Alliance. European-American Relations Since 1945 (London: Macmillan, 1980).
Jussi M. Hanhimäki’s contribution in the present collection. See also Hanhimäki’s Containing Coexistence. America, Russia, and the ‘Finnish Solution’ 1945–1956 (Kent, Oh.: Kent State University Press, 1997)
I have discussed the pendulum swings and the reasons for them in ‘Uniqueness and Pendulum Swings in US Foreign Policy’, in my The American ‘Empire’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 117–41. For a study indicating that the British pendulum did not swing quite as far out as the American one even under Thatcher, see Gabriella Grasselli, British and American Responses to the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1996).
Although many writers have of course touched upon the Harmel report, there is still, as far as I know, no special study of this important event in NATO history. For the best account we have, see Helga Haftendorn, Nato and the Nuclear Revolution: A Crisis of Credibility, 1966–67 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), pp. 320–85.
The French withdrawal is further analyzed in my ‘Empire’ by Integration. The United States and European Integration, 1945–1997 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), pp. 796–7.
Georges-Henri Soutou, L’alliance incertaine. Les rapports politico-stratégiques franco-allemands, 1954–1996 (Paris: Fayard, 1996).
Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979) particularly pp. 408–12
These developments are expertly analyzed in Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed. A Study in Statecraft (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995).
Holly Wyatt-Walter, The European Community and the Security Dilemma, 1979–92 (London: Macmillan, 1997), particularly pp. 169–83.
The best account of the EDC story is still Edward Fursdon, The European Defence Community: A History (London: Macmillan, 1980).
Alan Dobson in the present collection. Alan S. Milward, The Reconstruction of Western Europe 1945–51 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)
Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-State (London: Routledge, 1992).
Pierre Guillen, ‘Europe as a Cure for French Impotence? The Guy Mollett Government and the Negotiation of the Treaties of Rome’, in Ennio Di Nolfo, ed., Power in Europe. II: Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy and the Origins of the EEC, 1952–1957 (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1992), pp. 513–16
Hans-Peter Schwartz, Adeanauer. Der Staatsmann: 1952–1967 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1991), pp. 810–39
Volker Hentschel, Ludwig Erhard: Ein Politikerleben (Munich: Olzog, 1996), pp. 410–25
See Helga Haftendorn, Nato and the Nuclear Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)
Jane Stromseth, The Origins of Flexible Response (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988).
For a good short account of the offset negotiations and the fall of Erhard, see Schwartz, ‘Europe and the Johnson Administration’, pp. 23–7. See also Gregory F. Treverton, The Dollar Drain and American Forces in Germany. Managing the Political Economies of Alliance (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1978)
Diane B. Kunz, Butter and Guns. America’s Cold War Economic Diplomacy (New York: Free Press, 1997), pp. 167–74.
The clearest example of this is John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).
For an overview of the history of the Western alliance written with considerable emphasis on the role of the personalities involved, see Richard J. Barnet, The Alliance. America—Europe—Japan. Makers of the Postwar World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983).
For fascinating studies of the impact of American culture in Europe, see Richard Kuisel, Seducing the French. The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)
Reinhold Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonisation und Kalter Krieg: die Kulturmission der USA in Österreich nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg (Wien: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1991).
US Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States. 1995. The National Data Book (Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census, 1995), p. 806.
US Department of Commerce, Historical Statistics of the United States. Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census, 1975), vol. II, pp. 871–2.
For good surveys of US—European relations vis-à-vis Asia and Africa, see Elizabeth Sherwood, Allies in Crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990)
Douglas Stuart and William Tow, The Limits of Alliance. NATO Out-of-Area Problems Since 1949 (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990).
Gary R. Hess, The United States’ Emergence as a Southeast Asian Power, 1940–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987)
Robert J. McMahon, Colonialism and Cold War: The United States and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, 1945–49 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981)
George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam 1950–1975 (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1986).
For a good survey of the literature on the American role in the Middle East, see Douglas Little, ‘Gideon’s Band: America and the Middle East since 1945’, in Michael J. Hogan, ed., America in the World. The Historiography of American Foreign Relations Since 1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 462–500.
For a competent new history of the Korean war, see William Stueck, The Korean War: An International History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).
Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Vantage Point. Perspectives of the Presidency 1963–1969 (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971).
For de Gaulle’s attitude, see Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle. The Ruler: 1945–1970 (London: Harvill, 1991), pp. 61–3
For interesting recent articles on the state of German—American relations, see William Drozdiak, ‘Washington and Bonn Go Separate Ways in New Europe’, International Herald Tribune, 12 May 1997, p. 1; Helmut Schmidt, ‘Miles to Go. From American Plan to European Union’, Foreign Affairs, 76:3, May–June 1997, pp. 213–21.
This is the correct quotation, although it is usually quoted as ‘reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated’. For this see, Ned Sherrin, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 89.
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Lundestad, G. (1998). American—European Cooperation and Conflict: Past, Present, and Future. In: Lundestad, G. (eds) No End to Alliance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26959-4_12
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