Europaeum Conference: Is there still a West ?

2007 Europaeum Conference: Is there still a West

Fissures in the TransAtlantic alliance – which has dominated world affairs for the past 60 years – following the end of the Cold War, the 9/11 attack, and the Iraq invasion, were under the spotlight at events organised under the Europaeum’s TransAtlantic Dialogue Programme.

The conference in Washington DC, set out to investigate if solidarity of the West was cracking – and featured key contributions from Henry Kissinger, Lord (Chris) Patten, former EU Commissioner, Richard Haass, Chair of the Council for Foreign Relations, Lee Hamilton, former chair of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joschka Fischer, former German Foreign Minister, Nicholas R Burns, Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Professor Joe Nye, Kennedy School, Harvard University, among many others.

It was co-organised and supported by he Weidenfeld Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and the Woodrow Wilson Centre, which hosted the event, and the Europaeum, as part of the association’s continuing US-Europe Dialogue Programme. Key arguments during the two day-event included security and combating terrorism, the emergence of energy competition, the importance of underlying values binding the Western alliance, and significant views from other key global players – notably China, India, and Russia. Perhaps the neatest summary came from Richard Haass, who likened the West to a maturing marriage, where the couple may not be in the early flush of romance, but will clearly ‘stay together for the sake of the kids’.

Europaeum participants were invited from the universities of Oxford, Bonn, Krakow, Bologna, Geneva and Leiden. A special on-line Europaeum Debate around themes raised at the event, has been created on the association website.

Click here to view the full conference report