Senior Statesmen Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Summers Chair New Council Task Force on U.S. Policy Toward Europe

Senior Statesmen Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Summers Chair New Council Task Force on U.S. Policy Toward Europe

April 14, 2003 8:50 am (EST)

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April 14, 2003 - With the United States facing the greatest transatlantic rift in 50 years, former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and former Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence H. Summers will co-chair a Council-sponsored independent task force on a new U.S. policy toward Europe. The bi-partisan task force will bring together leaders from business, former senior government officials, and policy experts to issue a report that will address the rift. The group will also include a number of European experts.

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"I can’t imagine two more able people than Henry Kissinger and Larry Summers to take on this challenge,” said Council President Leslie H. Gelb. Kissinger is currently Chairman of Kissinger Associates; Summers is President of Harvard University.

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The Task Force addresses four core questions:

 

  • How serious is the current transatlantic rift and how did it come about?

     

     

  • How important are good working relationships with Europe, including institutional ties, to America’s interests?

     

     

  • Is it possible to put the transatlantic community on a sounder basis, and if so, what are America’s strategic options? Do we need to substantially reorient relations?

     

     

  • What policy paths and actions should the United States be prepared to take to carry out the preferred strategy?

 

Council Senior Fellow and former National Security Council official Charles Kupchan is the Task Force project director.

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The Council-sponsored Task Force on Transatlantic Relations is made possible by generous grants from ENI SpA and Merrill Lynch.

Established in 1921, the Council on Foreign Relations is a nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank, dedicated to increasing America’s understanding of the world and contributing ideas to U.S. foreign policy. The Council accomplishes this mainly by promoting constructive debates and discussions, clarifying world issues, and publishing Foreign Affairs, the leading journal on global issues.

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TASK FORCE MEMBERS

GIULIANO AMATO is a member of the Italian Senate and Vice Chairman of the Convention on the Future of Europe. He has held numerous posts in the Italian government, including that of Prime Minister from 1992 to 1993 and 2000 to 2001.

REGINALD BARTHOLOMEW is Vice Chairman of Merrill Lynch Europe. His U.S. Government career included assignments in State, Defense, and the White House and as Ambassador to Lebanon 1983-86, Spain 1986-89, NATO 1992-93, Italy 1993-97, and Undersecretary of State for International Security Affairs, 1989-92.

DOUGLAS K. BEREUTER is a Republican Representative from the 1st District of Nebraska, first elected to the House in 1978. He is a senior member of the Committee on International Relations, which he has served on since 1983, and is currently Chairman of the Subcommittee on Europe. He is also the current President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

HAROLD BROWN is a Partner at Warburg, Pincus & Co. and Counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has served as Chairman of the Foreign Policy Institute of the John Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Secretary of Defense during the Carter administration, and President of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

RICHARD R. BURT is Chairman of IEP Advisors, Inc. His federal government experience includes service as the U.S. Chief Negotiator in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) with the Soviet Union. He also served as U.S. Ambassador to Germany, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs, and Director of the State Department’s Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs.

THIERRY DE MONTBRIAL is President of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), which he founded in 1979. In 1973, he was entrusted with the creation of the Policy Planning Staff (Centre d’Analyse et de Prévision) in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was its first Director from 1973-79. He has been a columnist at Le Figaro from 1989 to 2001, and at Le Monde since 2002.

THOMAS E. DONILON is Executive Vice President of Law and Policy at Fannie Mae. From 1993 to 1996, Mr. Donilon served as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Warren Christopher. In the past two decades, he has served as a CBS News Political Consultant, in the White House Office of Congressional Liaison during the Carter administration, and as an adviser to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Supreme Court nominations.

STUART E. EIZENSTAT is Director of International Trade and Finance at Covington & Burling. During the Clinton administration, Eizenstat served as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs, and Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade. He was Ambassador to the European Union from 1993 to 1996.

MARTIN S. FELDSTEIN is President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Bureau of Economic Research and previously chaired the Council of Economic Advisers. He has been Professor of Economics at Harvard University since 1967. Mr. Feldstein is a member of advisory boards of the Congressional Budget Office and the Federal Reserve Banks of New York and Boston.

JOHN LEWIS GADDIS is Robert A. Lovett Professor of History and Political Science at Yale University. Professor Gaddis is on the advisory board of the Cold War International History Project and served as a consultant on the CNN television documentary “Cold War.” He is the author of numerous books on grand strategy and the history of the Cold War.

TIMOTHY GARTON ASH is Director of the European Studies Centre at St Antony’s College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the author of seven books of contemporary history including, most recently, History of the Present. His essays appear regularly in the New York Review of Books and other journals, and he writes a fortnightly column in The Guardian which is syndicated across Europe.

G. JOHN IKENBERRY is Peter F. Krogh Professor of Geopolitics and Global Justice at Georgetown University. His recent books include After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars, which won the American Political Science Association’s Paul Schroeder and Robert Jervis Award for the Best Book in International History and Politics (2000-2001). He previously taught at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania and served on the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department during the first Bush administration.

JOSEF JOFFE is Editor and Publisher of the German weekly Die Zeit and Associate of the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, Harvard University. Previously, he was Columnist/Editorial Page Editor of the Suddeutsche Zeitung. He has taught at Stanford, Princeton, and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He was a member of the Council’s "1980s Project."

ROBERT W. KAGAN is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in U.S. leadership and foreign policy. He is cofounder, with William Kristol, of the Project for a New American Century. Prior to joining the Carnegie Endowment, he worked in the Department of State as a Deputy for Policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs and was a member of the policy planning staff as Principal Speechwriter to the secretary of state.

HENRY A. KISSINGER is co-chair of the task force and Chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc., an international consulting firm. He was the 56th Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977, serving under Presidents Nixon and Ford. He also served as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs from 1969 to 1975. He has since served on a number of U.S. government boards and commissions including the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the Defense Policy Board.

CHARLES A. KUPCHAN is director of the task force and Senior Fellow and Director of Europe Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also an Associate Professor of international relations at Georgetown University. Dr. Kupchan was Director for European Affairs on the National Security Council during the first Clinton administration. Before joining the NSC, he worked in the U.S. Department of State on the Policy Planning Staff.

SYLVIA M. MATHEWS is Chief Operating Officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She previously served in the Clinton administration as Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Assistant to the President, Deputy Chief of Staff to the President, and as Chief of Staff to Secretary of the Treasury, Robert E. Rubin.

ANDREW MORAVCSIK is Professor of Government and Director of the European Union Program at Harvard University. He has authored more than 100 scholarly books and articles on European integration, international organization, human rights, and transatlantic relations— including one CFR Task Force study. His commentary appears regularly in Newsweek magazine. Prior to entering academia, he served as a trade negotiator in the US Department of Commerce and held other positions in government and journalism.

ANDRZEJ OLECHOWSKI is Leader of the Polish political party, Civic Platform. He served as Polish Foreign Minister from 1993-1995, as Finance Minister in 1992, and as Economic Advisor to President Lech Walesa.

FELIX G. ROHATYN was U.S. Ambassador to France from 1997-2000. Prior to this role, Rohatyn was Managing Director of the investment bank Lazard Frères and Company in New York, which he joined in 1948. He has also served as Chairman of the Municipal Assistance Corporation (MAC) of the City of New York and as a member of the Board of Governors of the New York Stock Exchange.

BRENT SCOWCROFT is President and founder of The Scowcroft Group. He served as National Security Advisor to Presidents Ford and Bush. From 1982 to 1989, he was Vice Chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc. He served in the military for 29 years, reaching the rank of Lieutenant General.

ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER joined Princeton University as Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in September 2002. Slaughter was most recently the J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign and Comparative Law at Harvard University. She also serves as President of the American Society of International Law.

LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS is co-chair of the task force and President of Harvard University. He served as Under-Secretary of the Treasury, Deputy Secretary, and eventually Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration. Prior to his service in the Clinton administration, he was Vice President and Chief Economist for the World Bank, and a Professor of Economics at MIT and Harvard.

DANIEL K. TARULLO is Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. From 1993 to 1998, he was, successively, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs, Deputy Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, and Assistant to the President for International Economic Policy. From 1995 to 1998, he was also President Clinton’s personal representative to the G7/G8 group of industrialized nations.

LAURA D’ANDREA TYSON is Dean of the London Business School. Previously, she was Dean of the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. She was the National Economic Adviser to President Clinton and head of the National Economic Council. Ms. Tyson also served on the National Security and Domestic Policy Councils and was the first woman to become Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

STEPHEN M. WALT is Academic Dean at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he holds the Robert and Renee Belfer Professorship in International Affairs. He has been a Resident Associate of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, a consultant for the Institute of Defense Analyses, the Center for Naval Analyses, and the National Defense University.

TASK FORCE OBSERVERS

CAROLINE ATKINSON is Senior Director of Stonebridge International LLC, an international strategic advisory firm based in Washington, DC. She served as Senior Advisor to the Secretary and Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Affairs at the U.S. Treasury Department from 1997 to 2001. Before joining Treasury, she was a senior official at the International Monetary Fund.

LEE FEINSTEIN is Deputy Director of Studies and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was the Principle Deputy Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department during the second Clinton administration. He co-directed the task force on Enhancing U.S. Leadership at the United Nations (2002) sponsored by CFR and Freedom House.

BENN STEIL is the Andre Meyer Senior Fellow and Director of International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also the Editor of International Finance (Blackwell Publishers), a member of the European Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee and the Advisory Board of the European Capital Markets Institute. Until November 1998, he was Director of the International Economics Programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.


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