Euromissiles: The Nuclear Weapons That Nearly Destroyed NATO

Abstract: 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.

Bio: Susan Colbourn is associate director of the Program in American Grand Strategy at Duke University and the author of Euromissiles: The Nuclear Weapons That Nearly Destroyed NATO (Cornell, 2022). A diplomatic and international historian, she received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Toronto. Prior to joining Duke, she held fellowships at Yale University and Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.