Transatlantic Security Symposium - 4. ed.

The fourth edition of the Transatlantic Security Symposium, held on 12 September 2011 at Italy’s Foreign Ministry, delved into the topic Re-thinking Western Policies in Light of the Arab Uprising. The rationale of the project was that the transatlantic partners badly need to re-define their approach to the countries in the region, recalibrating their strategic objectives according to the new realities on the ground. The conference featured a high-level participation of experts from the US, Europe, and North Africa and the Middle East. After Professor Steve Heydemann from the US Institute for Peace delivered a keynote speech on the topic "Accepting the challenge, embracing the change", a number of papers were presented and discussed. Authors included Robert Springborg from the Naval Postgraduate Academy and Issandr El-Amrani, a free-lance journist from Cairo, who focused on the US response to the Arab Uprising; the EU reaction to it was the subject of the papers by IAI research fellows Silvia Colombo and Nathalie Tocci, as well as by Ahmed Driss from the Tunis-based CEMI; finally, Muriel Asseburg from SWP, Khaled Elgindy from Brookings, and Ahsraf Kishk from the Diplomatic Center for Strategic Studies of Cairo concentrated on how the EU and the US could better coordinate their approach to the region. A revised version of the papers, together with a report of the conference, has been published in an ad hoc volume. (financing: Compagnia di San Paolo, Robert Bosch Stiftung, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Italy’s Foreign Ministry, NATO Public Diplomacy Division).