Founding Mission Statement
Winter 1996

Many thinking people in the United States and Europe fear the emergence of a new mood of isolation and introspection in the United States. Equally, many Europeans are concerned that, as the European Union expands and draws closer together, Europe is becoming inward-looking. And a pervasive feeling of economic insecurity on both sides of the Atlantic serves to aggravate these tendencies.

There were early symptoms of drift and self-absorption even in the optimistic climate of the years immediately following the end of the Cold War. In particular the U.S. and Western Europe did little to provide a proper measure of economic and political security for the still vulnerable democracies and economies of Central Europe. Despite promises of enlargement, they were dilatory in negotiating the entry of the Central European countries into NATO. They allowed the war in the former Yugoslavia to provoke serious divisions in the Western alliance. And they formulated no clear response to the disturbing political developments in Russia. It was a similar story in trade and economics. The European Union kept the new market economies to its East at arms length in extended negotiations. And there was little progress towards the establishment of a wider Atlantic Free Trade Area that would provide a major stimulus to trade as well as complementing and underpinning the U.S. military presence in Europe. 

Concern about these trends fueled the original case for a New Atlantic Initiative when the idea was conceived two years ago. But we were then living in the first optimistic phase of the post-Cold War period. In these circumstances, it was difficult to convince policy-makers of the need for a major international initiative of the kind we were proposing. Relieved that the threat of thermonuclear war had vanished along with the Soviet Union, they viewed the future in rosy terms: successful economic reform in Russia and Eastern Europe, the consolidation of democracy there, the gradual accession of the new model market democracies to a Europe united along Maastricht lines, and a U.S. foreign policy built on a stable NATO, friendship with Russia and multilateralism through the UN. In general, they took the apparent stability of the time for granted, saw no need to shore it up, and pursued their own concerns.

But the future has been a great disappointment. Market reforms in the former communist countries are being slowed down or reversed. Post-communists now govern in all the former satellites except the Czech Republic. A former communist has replaced
Lech Walesa as president of Poland. The communists won 45 per cent of the Russian Duma in the recent elections. And Central Europe has seen its membership of both NATO and the EU postponed. What Helmut Kohl called a "wealth wall" is replacing the Iron Curtain that divided Europe.

Even so, political instability has leapt over it. Since the end of the Cold War, we have seen the collapse of the entire Italian political establishment, the obliteration of governing parties in Canada and Japan, the rise of extremist political parties in several European countries, and major riots and strikes in France in protest at economic reforms. Even the 1994 Republican victory, though it seemed to be merely a transfer of power in conventional two-party politics, was really a popular rejection of the method and character of U.S. government since 1945. And there are further signs of political upheaval ahead: current British opinion polls show the Labour Party with a lead of 25 points over the Conservatives; once again, a governing party faces a possible defeat of historic magnitude.

These political upheavals suggest an underlying systemic instability: 

Almost all governments face a budgetary crisis, with some governments facing expenditure at more than 50 per cent of gross domestic product— many with deficits in double digits. 

High social benefits and excessive regulation have pushed European labor costs to uneconomic levels compared to the Asia-Pacific region. As a result, job creation is low and unemployment is both high and long-term, fostering a pervasive economic insecurity. 

Many European countries, notably Germany, now face a demographic crisis. They are having too few children to pay for the pension and benefits they have awarded themselves. 

Attempts to tackle these problems, either through corporate downsizing in the United States or through fiscal reform in France and Italy, provoke widespread economic insecurity which then expresses itself as political upheaval of one kind or another. 

In the face of global economic competition, especially from the socially-stable, low-tax, small-government economies of the Pacific rim, new policies must be embarked upon. But there is a clash of visions on how to solve these crises. One vision seeks to defend
existing levels of regulation and subsidy by corporatist market-sharing at home and protectionist barriers against the outside world. The second seeks to stimulate economic growth and opportunity through free trade, wider markets and prudent deregulation. But it
will be much easier for governments to pursue the second course if the international environment is favorable to economic growth and political stability.

It is to foster such an environment that we will be holding a major international congress, attended by senior political, business and cultural leaders from America and Europe, in Prague on May 10-12, 1996. We trust that this will be the first step in a new Atlanticism. We believe that such a meeting, under the patronage of Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Schmidt, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and Leszek Balcerowicz, will confirm the pressing need for transatlantic leadership and cooperation. We intend to proclaim the general aims of such cooperation in the Prague Declaration of Atlantic Principles and to outline the practical policies needed to implement it in a New Atlantic Agenda. We hope thereby to inspire policy makers, legislators and other shapers of public opinion to strengthen existing instruments of cooperation; create greater solidarity amongst Atlantic countries and, above all, launch a new Atlantic Movement to win support for our objectives. These are:

To secure the admission of Central Europe into the institutions of Atlantic defense and European economic cooperation, notably NATO and the European Union. 

To move towards free trade between an enlarged European Union and the North American Free Trade Area. 

To encourage greater openness and flexibility within European institutions. 

And to establish or, where they exist, to reinvigorate Atlantic institutions of political cooperation and consultation. 

From this beginning, it is hoped, a new Atlantic movement will develop, similar to the European movement, with small secretariats on both sides of the Atlantic, and national committees in all the countries represented, to publicize the Declaration of Prague and
the New Atlantic Agenda, to seek broad public support for their aims and proposals, and to organize political action to support them.

Given strong American leadership— sine qua non of European stability as this century has twice demonstrated— policies could ignite a burst of Atlantic prosperity greater than any boom since the Second World War. Not only would that prosperity help the Atlantic countries to dismantle the excesses of the regulatory bureaucratic state; it would also strengthen the position of America and the West in world politics when a major challenge is being mounted by the rising suns of Asia.

These policies will be the centerpiece of discussion at the Congress of Prague. It will be a positive and forward-looking event—perhaps a historic one. But the debates will take place against a more somber background than seemed likely two years ago. What
the growing political crisis in our world has done is to raise the stakes of Atlantic cooperation immeasurably.