The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) played a key role in U.S.-Soviet relations in the early 1970s. This article reassesses some aspects of the SALT process in the light of important evidence that has become available in recent years. The key question is whether U.S. policy in the SALT negotiations was rooted in strategic stability theory—that is, in the idea that both major powers should work out an arrangement that would guarantee the survivability and effectiveness of both sides’ strategic nuclear forces, thereby reducing whatever incentive either of them might have to strike first in a crisis. The notion that U.S. policy on SALT was rooted in that theory is essentially a myth—although a myth that had important political consequences. The SALT process of the 1970s, as shaped by decisions made during the administration of Richard M. Nixon, helped pave the way for the hardening of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union in the early 1980s—scarcely the result supporters of nuclear arms control had been hoping for a decade earlier.

Four distinguished analysts of French foreign policy under Charles de Gaulle provide in-depth assessments of the new book edited by Christian Nuenlist, Anna Locher, and Garret Martin, Globalizing de Gaulle: International Perspectives on French Foreign Policies, 1958–1969 , published by Lexington Books. The commentators praise the book's wide scope and many of its essays and broad themes, but they raise questions about Garret Martin's contention (shared by a few, though not all, of the other contributors to the volume) that de Gaulle had a coherent if ultimately unsuccessful strategy to overcome the Cold War and move toward the unification of Germany and Europe. In article-length commentaries, both Andrew Moravcsik and Marc Trachtenberg take issue with Martin's view, arguing that de Gaulle's foreign policy involved more bluff and bluster than any genuine attempt to bring about the reunification of Germany or to end the Cold War. Moravcsik also provides a spirited defense of the “revisionist” conception of de Gaulle's policy toward Europe, which sees the general as having been guided mostly by his domestic economic and political interests—a conception that Trachtenberg has also come to accept. The forum ends with a reply by Nuenlist, Locher, and Martin to the four commentaries.

President Richard Nixon and his chief foreign policy adviser, Henry Kissinger, sought to build a close relationship with the new French President Georges Pompidou, who had replaced the testy Charles de Gaulle in mid-1969. Initially, Pompidou and his ministers warmly welcomed the new U.S. policy. But by the end of the Nixon-Pompidou period in 1974, U.S.-French relations were in a tailspin. This article explores what went wrong, showing that numerous issues helped to produce a rift in bilateral ties: the new international monetary framework after the demise of the Bretton Woods system, the U.S.-French nuclear weapons relationship in the early 1970s, the “Year of Europe” affair, and U.S.-European tensions after the outbreak of war in the Middle East in October 1973. This period may have been a lost opportunity for lasting improvements in Franco-American relations.

This article reassesses U.S. Cold War policy in 1945, with particular emphasis on Eastern Europe. The article considers how the U.S. government proposed to deal with the Soviet Union in the postwar period more generally. The article looks closely at U.S. policy toward Poland and toward Romania and Bulgaria and sets these policies into context in order to determine whether U.S. leaders had “written off” the East European countries by the end of the year, consigning them to a Soviet sphere of influence. The article traces the strategic concept underlying U.S policy and analyzes key aspects of Secretary of State James Byrnes's policy at the July 1945 Potsdam conference and in the October–December 1945 negotiations with the USSR about the occupation of Japan.

Five distinguished scholars offer separate commentaries on the article by Michael Cox and Caroline Kennedy-Pipe. All of the commentators reject the broad interpretation and many of the specific arguments put forth by Cox and Kennedy-Pipe. They point out several crucial issues that are omitted from the article and raise questions about the authors' sources, use of evidence, and selective invocation of secondary literature. They regret that Cox and Kennedy Pipe seem to dwell on a large number of the same matters that preoccupied radical revisionist historians in the 1960s. They argue that although Cox and Kennedy-Pipe offer a more sophisticated version of revisionism, their article suffers from many of the same shortcomings. Most of the commentators believe that the Marshall Plan merely reflected a division of Europe that was already well under way rather than being the precipitating cause. In that sense, the debate on the origins of the Cold War needs to go well beyond the issues raised by Cox and Kennedy-Pipe.

Michael Creswell and Marc Trachtenberg reply to the three commentaries, emphasizing the conflicting points raised therein. Addressing each of the respondents in turn, Creswell and Trachtenberg contend that their article accurately depicts French concerns in the late 1940s and 1950s, that it goes beyond existing “revisionist” works on the topic, that it debunks the traditionalist view of French policy, and that it makes use of the best evidence to judge French leaders' real (rather than publicly proclaimed) concerns.

This article challenges the traditional view that France was “obsessed” with the German threat in the decade after World War II and that French leaders only grudgingly accepted the policy that the United States and Britain had decided to pursue. The official rhetoric of the postwar period should not to be taken at face value. In reality, French leaders understood the logic of the “western strategy” for Germany and at a basic level endorsed it. Even on the question of West German rearmament—a critical issue in 1950—the French government was not nearly as opposed to moving ahead as many scholars have argued.

The responses to Andrew Moravcsik's article discuss the main substantive and methodological points raised in it. Although most of the respondents agree that Moravcsik has properly highlighted the importance of commercial concerns for de Gaulle's policy on European integration, they question the validity of his sharp separation between de Gaulle's political and economic goals for France. Several commentators argue that political and commercial concerns (including agricultural concerns) were closely intertwined in de Gaulle's vision of French grandeur. John Keeler brings up another crucial question: Was French agriculture really an obstacle to France's position in Europe? He argues that de Gaulle successfully supported and modernized French agriculture because he was convinced that this would contribute to France's geopolitical position in Europe and the Western world. In two longer commentaries, Jeffrey Vanke and Marc Trachtenberg raise questions about Moravcsik's methodology and use of sources. Both agree that Moravcsik draws on an impressive array of available materials concerning de Gaulle. But they both wonder whether a definitive account of de Gaulle's policies can be written when the documentary record is still incomplete, a point raised by the