ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the lessons of the 1970s during periods of crisis and lull, the factors conducive to both conflict and cooperation, and some of the experiences and risks which the Europeans and the USA face in coping-or failing to cope-with the energy crisis. Energy, in its availability and price and its political consequences, deeply affects relationships within the Western Alliance system. In the relationship of the USA to Western Europe over energy policy, the role of the Arab-Israeli conflict is much more indirect and the pressures toward alliance disruption are at least as likely to be countered by imperatives toward greater cohesion as to prevail themselves. The October 1973 war created real difficulties not only for Atlantic relationships, but for the European Community as well. The international problems of energy, particularly oil, are so complex and far-reaching that only longer-term measures involving cooperation among all major consumer states hold out the possibility of effectiveness.
