The Atlantic Community was a German-American project to apply

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture, and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, a ...

ideas to transatlantic foreign policy strategy. Launched in April 2007 as an undertaking of the

Atlantic Initiative The Atlantic Initiative (or "Atlantische Initiative" in German) is a non-partisan, non-profit and independent organization founded in Berlin in 2004. The organization's goal is to promote German-American friendship as well as research in the field ...

, 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 Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

, is often closed off to the public at large. The Advisory Board of the Atlantic Community is

non-partisan Nonpartisanship, also known as nonpartisanism, is a lack of affiliation with a political party and a lack of political bias. While an ''Oxford English Dictionary'' definition of ''partisan'' includes adherents of a party, cause, person, etc., ...

, and includes journalist

Marvin Kalb Marvin Leonard Kalb (born June 9, 1930) is an American journalist. He was the founding director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and Edward R. Murrow Professor of Press and Public Policy from 1987 to 1999. The Sh ...

, UK

Liberal Democrat Several political parties from around the world have been called the Liberal Democratic Party, Democratic Liberal Party or Liberal Democrats. These parties have usually followed liberalism as ideology, although they can vary widely from very progr ...

Lord Wallace, and German diplomat

Jürgen Chrobog Jürgen Chrobog (born 28 February 1940) is a German jurist and former diplomat. He worked in the Foreign Office of West Germany and the reunified Germany and among other diplomatic postings, was Ambassador to the United States from 1995 to 2001. ...

as members. In January 2009 the Atlantic Community was selected as a "Landmark in the Land of Ideas" b
Germany: Land of Ideas
Germany: Land of Ideas is a shared initiative of the

German government The Federal Government (, ; abbr. BReg) is the chief executive body of the Federal Republic of Germany and exercises executive power at the federal level. It consists of the Federal Chancellor and the Federal Ministers. The fundamentals o ...

, commerce, and industry under the patronage of former Federal President

Horst Köhler Horst Köhler (; 22 February 1943 – 1 February 2025) was a German politician who served as President of Germany from 2004 to 2010. As the candidate of the two Christian Democratic sister parties, the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, CDU ...

Mission

Atlantic Community has more than 7000 members, including future

policymakers Policy is a deliberate system of guidelines to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by a governance body within an orga ...

, think-tankers, journalists, academics, students, and active citizens. Its mission is to encourage open and democratic dialogue on the challenges facing Europe and North America while also giving a voice to a new generation of thinkers. Young leaders are provided the opportunity to publish and debate side by side with established experts, and to have their policy ideas seen by senior officials. The members of the Atlantic Community can share and discuss their ideas by posting

op-eds An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page," is a type of written prose commonly found in newspapers, magazines, and online publications. They usually represent a writer's strong and focused opinion on an issue of relevance to a targeted au ...

research Research is creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge. It involves the collection, organization, and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness to ...

, and comments on the website. The best analysis and policy recommendations are summarized in Atlantic Memos that are presented to

decision maker In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be either ra ...

s in

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...

and EU countries.

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 Eckart Peter Hans von Klaeden (born 18 November 1965 in Hanover) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as Minister of State at the German Chancellery from 2009 to 2013. E ...

, Minister of State at the

German Chancellery The Federal Chancellery (, ) is a Germany, German Federal agency (Germany), federal agency serving the executive office of the chancellor of Germany, the head of the Government of Germany, federal government, currently Friedrich Merz. The Chancel ...

, Karsten D. Voigt, the Coordinator for German-American Cooperation in the

German Foreign Office The Federal Foreign Office (, ; abbreviated AA) is the foreign ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany, a federal agency responsible for both the country's foreign policy and its relationship with the European Union. It is a cabinet-leve ...

, Julianne Smith of the American think tank CSIS, and current

Chatham House The Royal Institute of International Affairs, also known as Chatham House, is a British think tank based in London, England. Its stated mission is "to help governments and societies build a sustainably secure, prosperous, and just world". It ...

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 Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

format that summarizes the

netroots Netroots is a term coined in 2002 by Jerome Armstrong to describe political activism organized through blogs and other online media, including wikis and social network services. The word is a portmanteau of Internet and grassroots, reflecting th ...

suggestions and discussion from the community. In 2011 Atlantic Community celebrated the tenth anniversary of

UN Resolution 1325 The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

by launching an op-ed competition
Women on Transatlantic Security
. The initiative was sponsored by the

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 ''International Security'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal in the field of international and national security. It was founded in 1976 and is edited by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University and publis ...

issues. The next two Policy Workshop competitions wer
"Ideas with Impact: Students Advise Decision Makers"
an
"Your Ideas, Your NATO"
which took place respectively in May 2011 and May 2012 in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

. The former Policy Workshop competition focused on policy recommendations on

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

and

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

; the winners of the competition presented their policy proposals to Philip D. Murphy, the US Ambassador to Germany,

CDU/CSU CDU/CSU, unofficially the Union parties ( ) or the Union, is a centre-right Christian democratic and conservative political alliance of two political parties in Germany: the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and the Christian Social U ...

Foreign Policy Spokesman

Philipp Mißfelder Philipp Mißfelder (25 August 1979 – 13 July 2015) was a German politician and a member of the German Bundestag. From January through March 2014, he served in the German government as the Coordinator for Transatlantic Cooperation in the Field ...

and their policy advisers. The latter competition concentrated on

values, NATO partnerships after the

Arab Spring The Arab Spring () was a series of Nonviolent resistance, anti-government protests, Rebellion, uprisings, and Insurgency, armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began Tunisian revolution, in Tunisia ...

, and Smart Defense; the competition winners presented their policy recommendations to Philip D. Murphy and Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Defense Christian Schmidt (CSU). The most recent competition was
Shaping Our NATO: Young Voices on the Warsaw Summit 2016
. It focused on encouraging students and recent graduates under 28 years of age to produce innovative solutions to either contemporary or future problems. The four categories ranged from how NATO can increase solidarity amongst its members, to suggesting ways that the Alliance should learn from its mistakes and adapt to change. Apart from competitions and workshops, Atlantic Community provides daily top press commentaries, regular up-dates on the best of think-tanks' publications, and conducts expert surveys. For example, in April 2010 the think tank carried out a NATO sponsored survey of Russian experts aimed at gauging the path of NATO-Russia relations.

Jimmy Wales Jimmy Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), also known as Jimbo Wales, is an American List of Internet entrepreneurs, Internet entrepreneur and former Trader (finance), financial trader. He is a Founders of Wikipedia, co-founder of the non-profi ...

, the founder of the

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

, was featured among the decision makers interviewed by the Atlantic Community.

Deutschlands Agenda

The

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

-language

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

Deutschlands Agenda is the most recent project of the

, 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

ging 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'' German-language publications

''Die Welt'', May 4, 2011

''brand eins'', July 2010

''BILD'', July 22, 2010

''Frankfurter Allgemeine hochschulanzeiger'', November 16, 2009

''Frankfurter Allgemeine'', February 26, 2009

External links

Atlantic Community

Atlantic Initiative

Deutschlands Agenda
{{authority control Political and economic think tanks Foreign policy and strategy think tanks United States–European relations Think tanks established in 2007