Susan Colbourn (Duke University)
Chair: Jeffrey Michaels (IBEI)
November, 23rd, 2023
Europe was the principal battleground of the Cold War. Theater nuclear forces trained on targets across the continent, both east and west—the Euromissiles—highlighted how the peoples of Europe were dangerously placed between hammer and anvil. For those within NATO, the Euromissiles highlighted the fault lines of their alliance. Euromissiles is a history of diplomacy and alliances, social movements and strategy, nuclear weapons and nagging fears, and politics. To tell that history, Colbourn takes a long view of the strategic crisis—from the emerging dilemmas of NATO’s defenses in the early 1950s through the aftermath of the INF Treaty thirty-five years later.
This seminar series is organised within the program on American politics and international security by Institut d’Estudis Nord-americans (IEN) and IBEI. Chaired by Jeffrey Michaels, IEN Senior Fellow at IBEI.
Susan Colbourn is associate director of the Program in American Grand Strategy at Duke University. A diplomatic and international historian, she specializes in nuclear politics, European security, and the history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). She is the author of Euromissiles: The Nuclear Weapons That Nearly Destroyed NATO, published by Cornell University Press in autumn 2022.
