Contemporary Europe and the Atlantic Alliance: A Political History

This book examines the development of European states from the late1950s up to the present. It opens in 1958, the year when theEuropean Economic Community became operative, marking the start ofa new focus on questions surrounding the drive for Europeanintegration.

The authors use their understanding of the cultural and historicalcontext of developments to explain the diverse responses amongstEuropean states to the internal and external pressures andopportunities of the decades that followed. Their broad–rangingnarrative provides historical analysis of major ideas and eventssuch as the evolution and collapse of the Cold War; the rise of theNew Left and New Right groups; the changing role of NATO andsecurity issues in general; European cultural "Americanization";and the continuing debates on the ideal nature of Europeitself.

Throughout the book, analysis of events in Europe is framed withinthe context of the continent′s global ties, and, crucially, itsrelationship with the United States of America through the"Atlantic Alliance". The authors explain the ways in which Europe′sposition has evolved in accordance with its all–important US links,and, in the final chapter, suggest how it might develop in thefuture.

Preface.

Part I: Setting the Stage:.

Politics in the Atlantic Community: Late 1950s to the Early1970s:.

1. Introduction to the Politics.

2. US Politics: Kennedy to Nixon.

3. West German and Austrian Politics: 1959–1974.

4. French Politics: 1958–1974.

5. Britain and the Smaller Northern Democracies, 1959–1974.

6. Italy and the Iberian Peninsula, 1958–1978.

Part II: Transnational Cooperation and Conflict:1958–1974:.

1. Keys to Western Security.

2. The Cold War: 1958–1974.

3. New Left and Cultural Revolution.

Part III: Politics in the Atlantic Community: From theMid–1970s to the 1990s:.

1. US Politics: 1974: Ford to Reagan.

2. US Politics: Bush to Clinton.

3. Germany: Divided and United.

4. France, 1974 to the Present.

5. Britain, 1974 to the Present.

6. Italy and the Iberian Peninsula, 1979 to the Present.

Part IV: Transnational Cooperation and Conflict: 1975 to thePresent:.

1. Keys to Western Security.

2. Cold War: End and Aftermath.

Index.

L. H. Gann was Senior Fellow and Curator of the WestEuropean Collection at the Hoover Institution at the time of hisdeath in 1997. He had taught and researched extensively in Oxford,England and in Berlin, Germany. He was a member of the Institutefor Advanced Study, Princeton and a Fellow of the Royal HistoricalSociety, London. In 1995 he was awarded the Officer′s Cross of theOrder of Merit of the German Federal Republic.
Peter Duignan is Lillick Curator and Senior Fellow Emeritusat the Hoover Institution, where he directed a program of EuropeanStudies. He has had Ford, Guggenheim, and Rockefeller fellowships,was Visiting Scholar at St Anthony′s College, Oxford, and at JesusCollege, Cambridge. He was elected a member of the Institute forAdvanced Study, Princeton in 1988, and a Fellow of the RoyalHistorical Society, London.
The authors have written extensively on aspects of colonialism,European, Middle East, Hispanic and US–European relations. Theirprevious collaborations include The Rebirth of the West</1> (1992) and The United States and the New Europe1945–1993 (1994).