Summary - After forty years since the foundation of the Atlantic Alliance a great number of the political problems left open when it was stipulated are still present. To the lack of their explanation have surprisingly contributed phenomena which seemed would have made them clear: the detente in the East-West relations, the economic growth of Western Europe, the retrenchment of the strategic and economic power of the United States. The old questions have thus become complex, representing various crises: controversies on the allotment of the expenses for the military organization of the North Atlantic Treaty; differences and ambiguity in the choice of the military strategy, dissatisfaction and recriminations in the management of the political strategy of the alliance, for insufficient consultation and the tendency towards a diplomatic activity intended in a divergent way by the two Atlantic shores. Seen through the new openings brought about by the renewed East-West dialogue, the years of crisis and stagnation from 1979 to 1985 in which these problems have particularly emerged and to which this short essay on transatlantic relations refers, appears a period not to be repeated and on which to reflect in order to face, without falling in the same incomprehensions, a future so full of challenges for the West. The political climate of those years, still near in many respects, is efficaciously described in the reflections and the analyses "on the spot" by experts in international politics, both European and American. There emerges the picture of a growing difficulty of the Atlantic partners in coordinating their increasing differences: two partners that, though not strangers any more to each other, are still far from overcoming the old and problematic transition in the evolution of their relations. The risk is that at this redefinition of roles, requested by the historical process which concerns them, they arrive without a conscious reconsideration agreed and above all with a synchronized maturation, thus multiplying misinterpretations, recriminations, defeats: picture not exhaustive to frame such a complex phenomenon as the transatlantic relations which includes besides juridical and economic aspects, also aspects of history of international relations, nevertheless indispensable to grasp what has been the perception of those problems that European and North American political sensibility has given or is running the risk of giving in these years, directing willingly or unwillingly the course of those very same developments.