A Recast Partnership?: Institutional Dimensions of Transatlantic Relations

by Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies (Editor)

Forty years ago, at the peak of the Cold War, Henry Kissinger noted the "troubled" state of the transatlantic partnership, which he called "the most constructive American foreign policy since the end of World War II." A few years later, Kissinger called for new initiatives--"a fresh act of creation"--that would respond to "new problems and new opportunities" in ways equal to those undertaken by the postwar generation of leaders of Europe and America after 1945. The essays in this new CSIS volume do just that. Each of the authors--leading authorities on the Euro-Atlantic community--assesses the current state of transatlantic relations, questions where we are heading, and reflects on how best to proceed. The goal of the volume is not to reinvent either the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or the European Union, the two main institutional dimensions of the transatlantic partnership. Rather, it is to renew them and recast them in ways that can make each better suited to the other and make both more effectively prepared to help their 32 members address the security, economic, political, and societal issues they face in common. With new leaders in place in Germany, France, and Britain and with elections in Russia, Spain, Italy, and the United States in 2008, the stage is set for change and a new transatlantic beginning in 2009. The contributors to this volume offer an agenda for action that aims at the ever-closer Euro-Atlantic partnership needed for the emerging multipolar system of the twenty-first century.

240 pages, Paperback

First published March 3, 2008