GPPi and Brookings launch new project: Transatlantic Responses to Critical Issues in European Security

GPPi and the Brookings Institution have launched a new two-year research and dialogue project called Transatlantic Responses to Critical Issues in European Security. This project builds upon a previous GPPi-Brookings collaboration conducted during 2011 and 2012 and titled Common Goals – Different Approaches? Strengthening Transatlantic Cooperation on Global Energy Issues. As with the previous round, this new project is generously supported by a Policy Research and Debate grant from the Delegation of the European Commission in Washington, DC.

The United States and Europe face a complex set of international economic, resource, political and security challenges at a time when domestic economic priorities dominate internal political debates and policymaking. The unsustainable combination of growing energy consumption, dependency on oil and gas imports, and intensified competition for ever-scarcer energy resources puts both sides of the Atlantic at risk of energy insecurity and supply failure. At the same time, new security issues have been raised by US and European defense cuts, NATO’s new Strategic Concept, and in the EU’s Security Strategy Update of 2008. Making this worse, the ongoing financial crisis, austerity measures and increasing public pressure in the United States and the European Union are putting limits on national budgets and thus forcing trade-offs among crucial policy goals.

This two-year research and networking project will assess two key priority areas of the transatlantic alliance. First, it will analyze EU and US responses to major events with significant repercussions for regional and global energy markets, notably political turmoil in the Arab world and its impact on global oil markets as well as the impact of the Fukushima nuclear disaster on European electricity markets and energy security due to moratoria and/​or phase-out of nuclear power in European countries. Second, the project will examine new security challenges raised by US and European defense cuts. The project combines policy research with constructive and forward-looking transatlantic dialogue among researchers, industry experts and policymakers.

The project is based upon a two-pronged approach of applied research and the Transatlantic Energy Governance Dialogues (TEGD), a multi-stakeholder conference series bringing together EU and US policymakers, representatives of think tanks, NGOs, academia and the private sector. Research and dialogue are closely integrated and implemented in parallel in order to inject interim research results into the planned dialogue sessions to foster substantive debate while at the same time also leveraging the expertise and experience of dialogue participants towards the research process.