Future of U.S. Global Leadership

The Future of U.S. Global Leadership Program includes several initiatives, which aim at providing comprehensive analyses of the evolution of U.S. foreign and security engagement at the global level, and fostering strategic dialogue on its implications for the transatlantic partnership. The different projects take a variety of formats to propose detailed and prospective perspectives on the way the U.S. reconsiders its role and responsibilities in a global context to the European audience, and therefore enhance the understanding of the nature of U.S. power.

Through transatlantic workshops, publications, and bilateral meetings, the Future of the U.S. Global Leadership Program fosters a much-needed transatlantic debate between policy-makers, scholars, academics, journalists and private sector representative from the US and Europe.

Future of U.S. Global Leadership Program Initiatives

• The program was inaugurated in Paris on October 15th, 2013, in partnership with the Policy Planning of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with a transatlantic one-day workshop on The Implications of U.S. Strategic Restraint for the Transatlantic Relationship. The seminar provided in-depth analyses of the challenges for the U.S. leadership at the global level as well as concrete recommendations for the future of the transatlantic partnership. This first workshop initiated a fruitful collaboration with French officials institutions and think tanks.

• The U.S. Foreign Policy Speaker Series, launched in April 2014, seeks to foster dialogue between U.S. scholars and French academics, media, officials, and students, and brings three times a year, a high-level U.S. expert to discuss key U.S. foreign policy issues with the French audience. In 2014, the Paris Office organized the visit in Paris of Dr. Colin Kahl, Dr. Evan Feigenbaum and Dr. Esther Brimmer. This initiative is funded by the U.S. embassy in France.

• On September 12th, 2014, the Paris Office launched, in partnership with Chatham House, the Transatlantic Strategy Group on the Future of U.S. Global Leadership. This initiative is designed to enhance the European understanding of the future of American global leadership. It aims to assess and anticipate the impact of changes in the strategic orientations of American foreign policy on the future of European foreign policy, by bringing together a small group of experts and officials from Europe and America in London, Paris and Berlin over the course of a year, to discuss specific challenges and opportunities facing the transatlantic partners. Each session focuses on a single region or issue, how the US leadership is changing with respect to it, and how Europe should thus respond. The inaugural session, dedicated to Responding to a Revanchist Russia, was held at Chatham House in London on September 12th, 2014. A second session, entitled Transatlantic Security Policy Towards in a Changing Middle East took place in Paris on February 6th, 2015 and a third workshop was organized in Berlin in June 2015 on The Future of Economic Institutions. A final comprehensive report, entitled The Future of US Global Leadership Implications for Europe, Canada and Transatlantic Cooperation, has been published in May 2016.

• The Paris Office also developed, in partnership with the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), a Paper Series on The Future of American Global Leadership. This project, which included the publication of eight articles in French and English, sought to analyze and anticipate the emerging and future changes in U.S. foreign policy in the context of a rapidly changing and increasingly complex and uncertain international environment.