Between the United States and Russia
In the age of Trump and Brexit, does Europe need to rethink its security relationship with the US? Is it time for Europe to consider its own nuclear deterrent force?
Since the election of Donald Trump as US President there has been much discussion of the strained security relationship between the United States and its European NATO allies. Some commentators have spoken of the need for France and Germany, in a post-Brexit Europe, to rethink their security relationship and look more to their own defence needs, and even, with the US nuclear guarantee perhaps in doubt, to consider a separate European deterrent force.
This seminar used the recent occasion of the publication of the first two volumes of the official history of the UK strategic nuclear deterrent, to examine past perspectives on a European nuclear deterrent force, positioned between the US and Soviet Union, and to make comparisons to the present. Why did such schemes emerge? What practical mechanics did they involve? What were the obstacles that lay in the path to their creation? Did the experience of the 1960s and 1970s hold any lessons for today?
Professor Wyn Bowen(@wqbowen) is Professor of Non Proliferation and International Security at the, School of Security Studies, Kings College London.
Professor Lynn Edenis Associate Director for Research/Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, at the Institute for International Studies, Stanford University.
Professor Matthew Jonesis Professor and Head of Department at the Department of International History at the LSE.
Dr Helen Parris a Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics, Philosophy and International Relations at Keele University.
Peter Trubowitz (@ptrubowitz), Professor of International Relations and Director of the US Centre
This event was co-hosted with the Department of International History and held on 25 October 2017.