This is first book in English dealing with the history of the Socialist International-the international alliance of social democratic parties-during the presidency of former German Chancellor Willy Brandt from 1976-1992. This book is based on thorough studies in numerous European and Latin American archives. It tries to avoid a Eurocentric view, giving equal importance to the Latin American and the European actors. It takes a fresh look at party diplomacy, a new kind of international diplomacy that was introduced by Willy Brandt in the field of international relations in the 1970s and 1980s. This study brings new insights in European as well as Latin American history of this time. It has a special focus on the role of Social Democrats (European as well as Latin American) in the civil wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s, and on its repercussions on domestic policies in Germany, Venezuela etc., and on the relations of those countries with the U.S. government.