(Sponsored by: The German Marshall Fund of U.S.)
The principal objectives of the project were to identify the roots, strategic motives and perspectives of the growing divergence between the U.S. and its European allies over important security issues and especially over the central role of NATO as the primary transatlantic political-security-military institution; to consider the impact of this ceaseless disagreement and diversification on the emerging Central and East European (CEE) Partners of NATO and the EU and to propose an approach developing an adequate political and public framework for overcoming the strategic security differences within the Euro-Atlantic community.
The first part of the project studied the roots of post-Cold war transatlantic difficulties and their current status. The second part of the project focused on the impact of the US-West European security division on Central and East European countries. The third part of the project was concentrated in preparing an Early Warning (EW) study identifying potential cases of disagreement and friction between the transatlantic allies. And finally the last part of the project drew together various threads from the preceding analysis in order to extend a list of recommendations addressing policy implementation challenges of both the Western allies and their new Eastern partners.
In the framework of the realized activities were included: different researches, criteria and measurement approaches to study the impact of transatlantic relations on Central and East European countries policy and public perceptions with three round tables, one for each of the assessed countries:-Bulgaria, Latvia and Poland but the most important activity was the preparation of four case studies: the NATO campaign against Serbia during the Kosovo crises, the case of the International Criminal Court, the operation in Iraq and the consequences of European Union’s plans to build on autonomous defense capabilities, command and planning capacities.