This event, chaired by Leslie Vinjamuri, Director, US and the Americas Programme at Chatham House and member of the IDEAS Advisory Board, followed a first Club of Three/LSE IDEAS event in January that explored what Europeans – and notably France, Germany and the UK – were aiming to achieve in the region with their Indo-Pacific strategies.
The focus of April’s discussion was on the transatlantic dimension of the tilt to the Indo-Pacific, particularly what Europe and the US expected of each other in efforts to provide greater stability to this region. It involved over 40 senior figures from business and the policy field in France, Germany, the UK and US.
The main speakers were:
*Kori Schake, Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute; Former Director for Defense Strategy and Requirements, US National Security Council and Deputy Director for Policy Planning, US State Department
*Tobias Ellwood, British Conservative MP; Chair of the Defence Committee, House of Commons; Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (2014-17) and the Ministry of Defence (2017-19)
*Franziska Brantner, German MP and spokesperson for European Policy (Green party); Member of the Committee on European Affairs and Deputy Member, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Bundestag
Participants included: Barbara Stephenson (Vice Provost for Global Affairs, UNC Chapel Hill; President, American Foreign Service Association 2015-19); Heinz Schulte (Editor, Griephan Defence and Security Publications); Sir Peter Westmacott (Senior Adviser Chatham House; Former UK Ambassador to the US, Turkey and France); Veerle Nouwens (Research Fellow, Royal United Services Institute – RUSI); François Heisbourg (Senior Adviser for Europe, International Institute for Strategic Studies – IISS; Special Adviser, Foundation pour la Recherche Stratégique); Robert Daly (Director, Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, Wilson Center); Jim Townsend (Former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense – DASD – for European and NATO Policy); May-Britt Stumbaum (Director of the NFG Research Group “Asian Perceptions of the EU”, Freie Universität Berlin); Shashank Joshi (Defence Editor, The Economist); Scott Moore (Director, Penn Global China Program).