Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship

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. 

Europeans awoke on Thursday morning to news that President Donald Trump had announced the suspension of “all travel from Europe to the United States.” Blaming the European Union (EU) for failing “to take the same precautions and restrict travel from China,” Trump suggested “a large number of new [coronavirus] clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe.”

Review of Heidi Hardt. NATO's Lessons in Crisis: Institutional Memory in International Organizations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. xiv + 275 pp. $34.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-19-067218-8; $105.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-067217-1.

As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) marks its seventieth anniversary in 2019, it stands between a successful track record of longevity and an array of beguiling challenges. Taking stock of external threats to the alliance, internal discord among the allies, and looming challenges on both technological and geopolitical horizons, former US ambassadors to the alliance recently concluded that NATO at seventy is “an alliance in crisis.”

February 7, 2020: With the advent of the digital age and the rise of Russia and China as global powers, the EU must do more to defend itself and its relationship with the United States, according to Janne Kuusela, Director General Janne Kuusela. In an event moderated by  Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, Executive Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project and the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship he explained why Finland could be a potential paradigm for the EU’s defense strategy. 

Even if his administration ends on January 20, 2021 Donald Trump will have created a destructive legacy in foreign and domestic policy the depth of which is unrivalled in modern American history. In three short years, the president has done profound damage to the country’s international credibility and its capacity for moral suasion – key ingredients of the soft power that made it the anchor of liberal western world order of which it was the chief architect 70 years ago. The trauma of the Trump administration’s assault on postwar order will resonate beyond the (first) four years of any Democratic administration and will deepen dramatically, should he be re-elected in November.

US President Donald Trump has appointed Richard Grenell, US ambassador to Germany, as acting director of national intelligence. It's a sensitive post overseeing 17 US spy agencies and has traditionally been filled by an intelligence professional. The World's Marco Werman speaks with Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Director of the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship and the Future of Diplomacy Project, Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook speaks to WDR 5 on micro-multilateralism and the impact of urban diplomacy global diplomacy, particularly on climate change.

Several major tests and roadblocks are expected during the next several months, including whether the EU and China can agree on a bilateral investment agreement and whether European governments give the Chinese company Huawei contracts for building out 5G networks. Yet, despite the more assertive European approach, the EU remains keen on maintaining cordial relations with Beijing and ensuring strong continued business ties.

For decades, the Munich Security Conference served as a powerful symbol of the strength of the Western alliance. The 2020 installment offered a testament to its accelerating decline.

Director of the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship, Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook speaks to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung at the Munich Security Conference about the future of transatlantic relations and whether there needs to be a transatlantic security community.