International Security Studies 2024 Book Series presents
Michael De Groot, assistant professor of International Studies at Indiana University Bloomington:
“The Global Economic Shocks of the 1970s and the End of the Cold War .”
De Groot argues that the global economic upheaval of the 1970s was decisive in ending the Cold War. Both the West and the Soviet bloc struggled with the slowdown of economic growth; chaos in the international monetary system; inflation; shocks in the commodities markets; and the emergence of offshore financial markets. The disappearance of postwar conditions during the 1970s forced Washington and Moscow to choose between promoting their own economic interests and supporting their partners in Europe and Asia. As Disruption demonstrates, a new symbiotic economic architecture powered the West, but the Eastern European regimes increasingly became a burden to the Soviet Union.
De Groot is a diplomatic and economic historian, his current research focuses on economic statecraft and the link between political economy and security during the late Cold War. De Groot will be in conversation with Michael Brenes, co-Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy.