Simon Miles will discuss how the United States and the Soviet Union decided to move from covert engagement to overt conversation and how this laid the groundwork for the end of the Cold War. 

When the 1980s began, the United States and the Soviet Union looked like they were entering a dangerous new phase of their superpower competition, what commentators and historians have often dubbed, “the Second Cold War”. That’s only half right. In his new book, Simon Miles analyses US-Soviet relations between 1980-85 and shows how covert engagement between the two sides gave way to open diplomacy as both nations determined it was best means to accomplish their competitive goals.

This event is co-hosted by the Cold War Studies Project at LSE IDEAS, and the Department of International History.

Simon Miles is Assistant Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University.

Michael Cox is a Founding Director of LSE IDEAS and Emeritus Professor of International Relations at LSE.

Event hashtag: #LSEColdWar

LSE IDEAS (@lseideas) is LSE's foreign policy think tank. We connect academic knowledge of diplomacy and strategy with the people who use it.