German foreign policy faces profound challenges in 2021: Strengthening relations with the United States, navigating a complex relationship with China, working to ensure full post-COVID economic recovery in Europe and contributing to strengthening the European Union in the first full year following the UK exit from the Union – all while the 16-year political leadership of Angela Merkel as Chancellor comes to its end in September with a national election already dominating headlines. Germany’s Ambassador to the United States, Dr. Emily Haber, will discuss the future of the transatlantic and the German-American relationship with respect to key geopolitical and geo-economic questions facing her country in a critical election year. Faculty Chair, Nicholas Burns, will introduce the event and Executive Director, Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, will moderate.

This event is part of the series  “Meeting America,” the first of several virtual talks with the German Ambassador and American stakeholders across the United States.

This event is co-sponsored by the Eric M. Warburg Boston Chapter of the American Council on Germany.

For more information, please visit the Wunderbar Together Event Calendar Information Page.

Finding common ground to address deep divides in America may seem impossible on the surface. However, America uses soft power and focused attention with diverse nations all over the world to reach compromises for our national interests. Can we use some of what we have learned abroad in our efforts at home? Through new engagement, incentive metrics, new voices, cultural listening and more there is a way forward. 

Please join the Future of Diplomacy Project for a conversation with Farah Pandith, Senior Fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project, about the topics above. Executive Director, Cathryn Cluver Ashbrook, will moderate this discussion.

PLEASE NOTE: This seminar will be conducted via Zoom. Please register in advance for this meeting:

https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwkdOyprj4oHt1IKKoXS9vZWxlbkEqcRQgQ

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Is the Western alliance, which brought together the United States and Europe after World War II, in an inevitable state of decline, and if so, can anything be done to repair it? There seems little doubt that fragmentation of the Western alliance was under way even before Donald Trump’s unorthodox policymaking broadened the schism. David McKean, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the U.S., and Bart Szewczyk, Adjunct Professor at Sciences Po in Paris, discuss their vision for a “transatlantic renaissance.” 

In this book talk, co-hosted by the Executive Director and Research Director of the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship, Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook and Torrey Taussig, the authors will reflect on how U.S. and European leaders can work together to craft a new Atlantic Charter that would restore the liberal objectives that animated the Western alliance for more than seven decades and reinvent the transatlantic partnership for the challenges of our time.

PLEASE NOTE: This seminar will be conducted via Zoom. Please register in advance for this meeting:

https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMtdOurqz8iGtUdvN37Fn12qGYS0ANlPX30

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Please join the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and German Council on Foreign Relations’ (DGAP) launch event for the release of the joint report entitled, “Stronger Together: A Strategy for Revitalizing Transatlantic Power,” with Daniela Schwarzer, Director of the German Council on Foreign Relations, Victoria Nuland, Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, and Nicholas Burns, Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations at Harvard Kennedy School.

This publication is the culmination of a year-long project that convened a strategy group of experts and former government officials from the United States and Europe to discuss the crisis in the transatlantic relationship and propose a strategy to revive and strengthen it.  

The project’s report and eight individual action plans argue that after years of mistrust, recrimination and division, the bridge across the Atlantic should be “built back better.” But the U.S. and Europe cannot simply rebuild the ties of a previous era if we are to succeed in meeting today’s challenges. The transatlantic relationship must be rebuilt and reimagined. Our institutions must be strengthened. As the U.S. embraces its allies again, Europe too must rethink its approach to some fundamental issues. 

The task is urgent. The world needs a more powerful and purposeful transatlantic alliance to drive a new global agenda.   

Please use this link to register for the Zoom meeting. 

As the Polar/Arctic Sea Ice recedes, the Arctic is increasingly becoming an arena for great power competition: China is Advancing its Polar Silk Road,” while Russia continues to pursue legal, military and commercial avenues to exploit the geostrategic advantages Arctic waters could offer it in the future. Where for decades the Arctic was described as “high north, low tension,” these realities are forcing a shift in strategic thinking within NATO, particularly among member states adjacent to the Arctic and party to multilateral governance structures in the North, like the Arctic Council, whose parameters don’t address military security questions. Other, non-Arctic actors, including Singapore, Japan and the European Union, alongside key individual members states have also developed their own strategies on the Arctic. In this seminar with former U.S Ambassadors Paula Dobriansky (FDP Senior Fellow), David Balton and former Chair of the Arctic Research Commission and Belfer Center Fellow, Fran Ulmer, we will examine key countries’ economic and national security interests in region; the role of the rule of law in preventing conflict alongside critical questions of governance to balance environmental, economic and security concerns in this expert seminar.

This event is co-sponsored by the Arctic Initiative.

Corneliu Bjola is Associate Professor of Diplomatic Studies at Oxford University and among the leading, international thinkers on the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the practice of diplomacy and the bureaucratic systems that underpin functional international relations. He will discuss the opportunities and challenges in the digital age. Please note that breakfast and light refreshments will be served.

As part of its new career webinar series, the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship and the Future of Diplomacy Project invite current HKS students and alumni to discuss ‘real world’ perspectives on forging careers in diplomacy from a transatlantic perspective, with four HKS alumni. Students can join the discussion in person at G-06 in the Rubenstein Building, or dial into the conversation via Zoom (call-in details below).

Join the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship to discuss progress on EU defense policy, EU-NATO cooperation and the best means to tackle transnational security challenges in the digital age with Janne Kuusela, Director General for Defense Policy at the Ministry of Defense, Finland. The seminar will be held in Littauer-163 Faculty Dining Room. A light breakfast will be served.

China’s rise cannot be meaningfully assessed without a close look at the digital domain. Disputes related to digital technologies feature front and center in the U.S.-China trade war, as China continues making digital inroads on the European Continent. Meanwhile, debates over regulatory measures like GDPR serve as a reminder of the differences between the American and European approaches to data governance. Just how far has China gotten in its quest to primacy in digital technologies like 5G? What underlies China’s fervid pursuit of an AI-fueled national strategy? As American tech firms face sustained pushback from European governments in the latter’s renewed call for “digital sovereignty,” how feasible is a coordinated U.S.-EU response to China’s digital expansion? Finally, how might this all be engendering a new balance between individual right to privacy, corporate interest and state power on a global scale? Join a panel of experts from an array of backgrounds in a vibrant discussion of these pressing topics. 

Join the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship and the Asia Center for a roundtable about "The Transatlantic Alliance in an increasingly non “Atlantic” world" with panelists Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, Harvard University; Maria Adele Carrai, KU Leuven/Harvard University; Adam S. Posen, President, Peterson Institute (PIIE); Meicen Sun, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Torrey Taussig, Harvard University / Brookings Institute; Vasilis Trigkas, Tsinghua University.

Co-sponsored by: Harvard University Asia Center and the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship, Harvard Kennedy School