European Institute

The U.S. State Department has some new pro-active policies toward Muslims and other minorities in Europe that seem to mark a salient change. For example, Charles Rivkin isn't your traditional American ambassador in Paris: a political appointee with a career background in entertainment, he is regularly spotted doing things like this: hosting hip-hop artists and ethnic-minority politicians at embassy receptions; inaugurating a large art mural in Villiers-le-Bel, the site of major urban riots in 2007; visiting a youth cultural center and engaging in debates with the audience; dropping in on embassy-sponsored seminars on social issues and engines of change;

Chinese officials have reportedly assured EU leaders that Beijing will be continuing (and perhaps step up) its rate of buying the government bonds of fiscally beleaguered member states of the euro.  Chinese support will be a powerful asset for these countries and the EU as a whole as they try to cope with markets’ attack on peripheral member states with large sovereign debt exposure. The previously undisclosed pledge was reported in the Financial Times.

(Nov. 22)   The three summit meetings last weekend resulted in what New York gamblers call a “trifecta” of three wins:  the leadership of the NATO alliance set a framework for missile defense in Europe without undermining nuclear deterrence as an ultimate security guaranty; Russia returned to its special partnership with NATO for the first time since the Georgia war in 2008; and the EU fielded an effectively streamlined team (the result of its own Lisbon treaty last year) that has already bolstered the pace of  EU-US cooperation.

By Anthony Luzzatto Gardner

Top-level focus on the single topic of better transatlantic teamwork on humanitarian assistance and development aid could help re-energize the anemic institution of U.S.-EU summits.