ABSTRACT
With Wilton Park’s initial mission accomplished by the late 1940s, the institution reinvented itself by broadening its scope. A natural new topic of discussion was transatlantic security. This chapter, surveying the period to 1979, surveys its discussions on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the East-West military balance, efforts to reduce Cold War tensions and challenges for Alliance cohesion. France’s withdrawal from NATO’s military structure and US involvement in Vietnam presented particular challenges for Alliance cohesion in the 1960s. Discussions reflected uncertainty about the continuing US military commitment to European security, disagreements over the sharing of the defence burden, fluctuating levels of concern about the Soviet threat and whether to counter the threat first through nuclear armament before the 1970s and then détente in the 1970s. The Soviet Union’s view of détente was based on the advantages to be gained from encouraging the Western Allies to make military concessions while continuing to use other methods to promote Soviet global influence. For the West, the cessation of intellectual, travel and economic prohibitions in the Soviet bloc and the Soviet arms build-up needed to be reversed. The two visions were dissimilar, and détente gradually failed.
