How do the leaders of an alliance manage a situation in which their interests diverge from those of their allies? When Allies Differ focuses on two cases, the Suez crisis of 1956 and the Falklands war of 1982, in which the interests of two of the closest allies, namely Britain and the United States, clashed.

The convincing analysis of the Suez crisis draws on recently declassified archival material and catalogs the extraordinary misunderstandings that brought the future of the Atlantic Alliance into question. Though the Falklands war is seen to have left the Alliance intact, Richardson argues that it damaged U.S. interests.

Using extensive interviews with participants from both sides of the Atlantic, the author recreates the decisionmaking process used during the Falklands war and exposes the centrality of domestic bureaucratic politics in global diplomacy.