Transatlantic exchanges: No better investment in the future

Congress Blog
December 18, 2014, 04:00 pm   By Chris Kojm and Christina Tsafoulias

Younger generations of Americans, specifically those under age 30, have grown up with a completely different understanding of the world than their predecessors – one that is colored not by the Cold War but by September 11^th.  Recent events in Ukraine, however, serve as a reminder that 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the sweeping democratic transformations that followed, Europe is not free from conflict.  As the world’s attention has focused on armed struggles in the Middle East and the rise of Asia, we risk forgetting something both simple and essential: Transatlantic relations still matter. In fact, they’re crucial to our future. 

The U.S.-European partnership is central to addressing problems requiring a global response – climate change and energy security; terrorism and organized crime; international trade and financial stability. Because we face a messier and more difficult world, international understanding --direct knowledge of different countries and cultures—will be vital to our ability to meet these many challenges. But if young people do not have the opportunity to experience the world outside the United States, where will our next generation of leaders come from?  

When they eventually come into positions of responsibility, the commitment of young people to transatlantic problem-solving will depend in large part on their personal experience. There is no better way to inform young people and to make a life-lasting impression than through exchange programs.  Whether university study abroad, high school exchanges, fellowships, or internships in another country, U.S.-European exchange programs offer a new perspective for participants and broaden their worldview in ways they never forget.   

You never learn more about your own country and its place in an interdependent world than when you live outside of it, observing from a foreign angle looking in.  As former Robert Bosch Foundation Fellows to Germany, we had this experience 25 years apart, but its effect on us was the same: it opened our minds to new possibilities.  We know that the best ideas can come from anywhere; the key is to adapt them to your country and your culture. 

Unfortunately, some of these valuable opportunities to live abroad are currently threatened by potential funding cuts.  If they’re scaled back, all of our horizons will be diminished. 

Take the long-running Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange (CBYX) program, which has been a tremendously successful multiplier for cultural understanding with over 22,000 alumni in its 30 years of existence.  Funded by the U.S. Congress and the German Bundestag, CBYX could face some very detrimental cuts in a tight FY2015 budget environment in the U.S.  The negative impact could have strong ramifications for the U.S.-German relationship, which is already struggling to recover from the NSA affair, as we jointly face a number of global threats that demand cooperation. 

Today there are a number of deserving exchange programs to an impressive array of countries around the world, and they should not have to fight each other for limited dollars. The U.S. needs partners around the world that export security and export public goods to the international system. Europe has filled this role in an exemplary way, reliably contributing to security and prosperity around the world. It is both harmful and troubling if we fail to fund those exchange programs that help make our partnership work so well. 

The long and rich history of U.S.-European exchange has been a central foundation for the transatlantic relationship and has helped build a community of shared values as we address the multitude of issues before us. There is no better investment for the taxpayer than funds invested in international educational exchange.  Informing young people today will lead to better partners and stronger alliances for a generation to come, so that Europe and America can work together on behalf of a peaceful and prosperous planet.  

Kojm served as chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 2009-2014 and is currently a visiting professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Tsafoulias is a former congressional staffer, Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow, and visiting fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin.  She currently serves as the Congressional adviser for the Embassy of Switzerland in Washington, D.C.

Exchange Programs and Transatlantic Relations

Where They Stand and Why They’re Essential

21/11/2014 | by Christina Tsafoulias  DGAP Transatlantic Paper, November 2014, 17 pp.

Category: Transatlantic Relations, Education

Programs promoting educational and cultural exchange between Germany and North America are important building blocks in the transatlantic relationship and should continue to serve this purpose in the future. Preparing the next generation of transatlanticists depends on them. Without appropriate support and recognition, however, such transatlantic exchange programs risk falling prey to budget cuts and being overshadowed by other strategic national priorities.

Transatlantic exchange programs may not be in vogue, but they have a long and important history dating back over six decades. Much like the transatlantic relationship itself, however, these tried-and-true elements of global educational and cultural training are mostly taken for granted. Exchanges between Europe and North America are often seen as standard fare – a nice experience for an individual to have at some point but not one that will necessarily influence international political discourse or the course of world affairs. As such, they have long since ceased to be considered a priority. Now, however, as governments reconfigure funding to align more closely with strategic goals, transatlantic exchange programs must demonstrate their worth. If they fail, they risk neglect, irrelevance and possibly even extinction.

The chief value of exchange programs continues to be the horizon-broadening effect they have on individual participants. Transatlantic programs specifically can help transform a general interest in Europe and its culture (or, in the United States and its culture, respectively) into a lasting interest in transatlantic relations. There is no doubt that over the past sixty years the personal intercultural experiences offered by US-European exchanges forged generations of transatlanticists, offering important precursors to dynamic, cooperative transatlantic relations at higher levels. Such programs need to stay robust – and robustly funded – if future generations of policy experts, diplomats, and business, media, and cultural leaders are to value the transatlantic relationship as much as their predecessors. Otherwise these specialists could well become an endangered species.

This paper takes US-German programs as a case study.

The US and Germany are arguably the two most important individual actors in the transatlantic relationship today. Germany and the US have long cooperated on a wide spectrum of policies and programming. Twenty years after the departure of the last American soldiers from Berlin, the dynamic is still evolving, but connections between the two countries remain of critical importance.

With an appendix listing current US-German Exchange Programs.

AUTHOR

• 

  Christina Tsafoulias

Siting recent developments in Europe, including in the Ukraine, as well as our co-observations of each others' reactions on topics from the environment to terrorism, as enormously valuable breeding grounds for testing policies in both Germany as well as in the USA, Ms Tsafoulias concludes: 

The long history of US - European (German) exchange has been central to the transatlantic relationship, and it should continue to serve this purpose in the future. Without appropriate support and recognition from both sides of the Atlantic, however, transatlantic exchange risks falling prey to budget cuts and being overshadowed by other strategic national priorities. While priorities necessarily develop and shift over time, we should not lose sight of the overwhelmingly positive impact of transatlantic exchange programs. Programs will have to prove their worth and build innovative approaches in the future, but the fact remains that preparing the next generation of transatlanticists depends on them.

 

 

Harvard's Kennedy School of Government; Annual German Conference

Report submitted Febr. 18 by J. Douglas Guy, President, MA-AATG

 

German Conference at Harvard 2013

I really wanted to report on the German Conference held at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard this weekend and this is the perfect avenue to do it. I managed to score a ticket at the last minute and went to this conference, arranged annually by German students attending the Kennedy School.  In this instance, the invited speakers included 

• German Ambassador Peter Ammon, 

• Ministerin für Arbeit und Soziales Ursula van der Leyen, 

• SPD- Parteivorsitzender and ex-Außenminister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, 

• retired Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, 

• editor of Die Zeit Theo Sommer, 

• FDP vice- chair Alexander Graf Lammsdorff, 

• former U.S. ambassador to NATO and Greece and State Dept. spokesman R. Nicholas Burns, and 

• the long-term Supreme Allied Commander of NATO Gen. Wesley Clark.  

•  -- Cem Özdemir from die Grünen and Joschka Fischer were scheduled to speak on Saturday, but called in sick. 

It was decidedly a group of heavy hitters and this was a unique opportunity to hear them share opinions at close quarters.

Friday started out with a policy position paper from Van der Leyen: Who Pays the Bill for Demographic Change?, followed by a blow-to-blow discussion with Papandreou on the horrific situation in Greece.  Papandreou announced that unemployment in Greece is currently 63%, and the country's chronic inability to collect taxes undercuts its ability to provide social services everyone expects.   Under these circumstances, with relatively lower unemployment in Germany, the two leaders agreed it would be to everyone's benefit to create more training programs in Germany for foreigners and get young Greeks, Spaniards, Portuguese etc. to jobs available in the North, but that the key element was indeed language training.  While everyone agreed English is the lingua franca of the EU, that's not going to help unemployed kids find and keep work in Germany. There was agreement between the two that advancement of language training was a key issue in preparing the next generation for the coming workforce. [The Goethe-Institut confirms that, reporting their courses in Spain and Greece are maxed out.]

The actual topic of this year’s German Conference 2013 was: The End of the West as We Know It?--Germany, the U.S. and the Future of the Transatlantic World.  In general there was a lot of agreement that the much-heralded decline of the West is so much journalistic hooey.  Yes, China, India, Brazil etc. are ascendent and taking their rightful place in the world economic order, 

But China in particular lacks more than one major ability: the democracy that forces dialogue and consensus. 

China is working hard to position itself as a superior industrial power but China is

• not building relationships, 
• not doing research and development, 
• not encouraging the creative thought and collaboration  

-- that are essential for a truly dynamic society and economy, but an anathema to a centrally planned economy. 

Yeah, the U.S. is going to have a smaller piece of the pie, but as long as the Transatlantic alliance stays healthy and the U.S. and EU continue their collaboration, the West will remain decades ahead of China and other ascending economies.  Wesley Clark spoke very forcefully that NATO was far less important as a defense alliance than as an agent of international collaboration, that its new mission is more economic in nature and more essential than ever.  The many young adult Germans in attendance were not exactly convinced listening to this figurehead of NATO, but they were certainly challenged, both by Clark and Steinmeier stating it's time to accept the idea of a Germany more ready to lead Europe and the EU than it has so far in the 21st century.   

All in all, an incredible conference---if I can get in again next year, I'm going!   

MfG, J. Douglas Guy