Atlantic Community

The Atlantic Community is a German-American project to apply Web 2.0 ideas to transatlantic foreign policy strategy. Launched in April 2007 as an undertaking of the Atlantic Initiative, the Atlantic Community aims at facilitating discussion between young thinkers and established members of the foreign policy realm in order to increase participation in a system that, in Europe, is often closed off to the public at large. The Advisory Board of the Atlantic Community is non-partisan, and includes journalist Marvin Kalb, UK Liberal Democrat Lord Wallace, and German diplomat Jürgen Chrobog as members. In January 2009 the Atlantic Community was selected as a “Landmark in the Land of Ideas”. Germany: Land of Ideas is a shared initiative of the German government, commerce and industry represented by the Federation of German Industries (BDI), and leading corporations, under the patronage of former Federal President Horst Köhler.

Mission

Atlantic Community has more than 7000 members, including future policymakers, think-tankers, journalists, academics, students, and active citizens. Its mission is to give a voice to a new generation of thinkers and to contribute to a more diverse strategic community.

The members of the Atlantic Community can share and discuss their ideas by posting op-eds, research, and comments on the website. The best analyses and policy recommendations are summarized in Atlantic Memos that are presented to decision makers in NATO and EU countries.

Additionally, the think tank provides daily top press commentaries and regular up-dates of the best of think-tanks' publications.

Activities

The main feature of the Atlantic Community is the Policy Workshop, where new commentary is published from think-tankers, journalists and decision makers working in subjects which are relevant to the transatlantic partners. Among contributors to the Workshops were Eckart von Klaeden, Minister of State at the German Chancellery, Karsten D. Voigt, the Coordinator for German-American Cooperation in the German Foreign Office, Julianne Smith of the American think tank CSIS, and current Chatham House director Robin Niblett. Members of the Atlantic Community then comment on these strategies and add their own ideas below the original article. The finished product, called an Executive Summary, is a one-page policy memo in PDF format that summarizes the netroots suggestions and discussion from the community.

In 2011 Atlantic Community celebrated the tenth anniversary of UN Resolution 1325 by launching an op-ed competition "Women on Transatlantic Security". The initiative was sponsored by the NATO Public Diplomacy Division and the United States Mission to NATO. The competition aimed at empowering young women working in the peace and security areas and encouraging them to participate in debates on international security issues.

Recent Policy Workshop competition "Ideas with Impact: Students Advise Decision Makers", which took place in May 2011 in Berlin, focused on policy recommendations on Iran, Russia and climate change. The students, winners of the competition, presented their policy proposals to Philip D. Murphy, the US Ambassador to Germany, CDU/CSU Foreign Policy Spokesman Philipp Mißfelder and their policy advisers.

Apart from competitions and workshops Atlantic Community conducts expert surveys. In April 2010 the think tank carried out a NATO sponsored survey of Russian expert aimed at gauging the path of the NATO-Russia relations.

Jimmy Wales, the founder of the Wikipedia, was featured among the decision makers interviewed by the Atlantic Community.

Deutschlands Agenda

The German-language blog Deutschlands Agenda is the most recent project of the Atlantic Initiative, launched in November 2011. Like atlantic-community.org, this platform concentrates on foreign policy; however, it especially aims to raise awareness as well as strengthen the debate on German foreign policy issues. In an ever more connected world, foreign policy factors have to be taken into account while making national policy decisions. By explaining these interactions as well as initiating a discussion on the topic between citizens, politicians and opinion leaders, Deutschlands Agenda looks to accustom citizens to the global context of decisions. By appealing especially to the younger generation and the blogging community, it not only wishes to deepen citizen participation, but also to actively and sustainably frame the German political dialogue and to eventually create a strong strategic community in Germany. Like atlantic-community.org, Deutschlands Agenda will condense fruitful discussions into executive briefings (Memos) and send them for consideration to key decision makers.

Sources

• Women on Transatlantic Security, NATO News June 30, 2011

• Broadening the Security Debate - Transatlantic Issues World Policy Institute, February 8, 2011,

• Game, Reset and Good Match?, NATO Review, April 2010

• The Wiki Way to Create Change in Global Politics Atlantic Community, February 23, 2010

• Johannes Bohnen BMW Stiftung, Re Thinking

German-language publications

• Das sind die besten Denkfabriken der Welt, Die Welt, May 4, 2011

• Die Nutzwerker, brand eins, July 2010

• Was genau ist die Atlantische Initiative?, BILD, July 22, 2010

• Denkfabrik 2.0, Frankfurter Allgemeine hochschulanzeiger, Novermber 16, 2009

• Ein "Facebook" fuer Aussenpolitik?, Frankfurter Allgemeine

External links

• Atlantic Community
• Atlantic Initiative
• Deutschlands Agenda