Diplomacy and International Politics

The following is an event write-up about the recent Future of Diplomacy Project (FDP) seminar on “The Future of Ukraine: Reconstruction, Energy Security, and Innovation” moderated by Ambassador Paula J. Dobriansky, Senior Fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project. 

There are a number of important issues on the transatlantic agenda. And, yet the relevance of the partnership between the United States and Germany has been called into question in recent years. From defense spending and the proposed U.S. military drawdown, to transatlantic trade and investment, to relations with other countries such as China and Russia, the German-American relationship has been charged. With the German presidency of the European Council, what can we expect for the transatlantic relationship in the months and years to come?On Tuesday, August 11, the ACG hosted a webinar with Congressman Rob Bishop (R-UT), Senior Member of House Committee on Armed Services, and Bundestag Member Dr. Tobias Lindner (Die Grüne), Spokesman for Security Policy, Chairman of the Defense Committee; and moderated by Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, Executive Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project and Executive Director of The Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship at the Harvard Kennedy School and Co-Director of the ACG’s Eric M. Warburg Chapter in Boston.

The recent ruling of the German Constitutional Court on the ECB was an economic and political bombshell. The deep controversy that resulted – within Germany and on a European scale – illustrates that the ambiguity surrounding the euro area’s legal order and architecture may have reached its limit.

In recent years the crisis of the transatlantic relationship and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has become a common theme in media, and various scholars have frequently questioned the futures of both entities. Not only are the new sovereigntist and populist trends within the NATO members calling the relevance of the transatlantic relationship into question, but some have found a reason to identify a crisis in the transatlantic relationship from the rise of global actors and the emergence of China as a great power in particular. China’s economic recovery after its “century of humiliation” is reshaping the international geopolitics and shifting the economic epicenter of the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 

Former U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered his take on global leaders and hotspots, from Iran and Saudi Arabia to North Korea and Syria. He was joined by Professor Nicholas Burns, Professor James Sebenius and Professor Robert Mnookin.

Michael Greenwald writes that with the recent change of leadership at the European Central Bank, the euro likely has a bright future ahead.

Washington should adjust its coercive economic strategy to reflect a broader use of tools beyond sanctions. Given the degree of political interference in China’s banking system via formal state ownership and the indirect influence of opaque party committees, penalties imposed against the country’s banks are unlikely to produce a meaningful change in behavior.

Like with the Soviet Union, America once again finds itself in a global competition with Beijing today, albeit with many more consequences for Washington’s financial statecraft.