Hosted by the Atlantic Council and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the Young Atlanticist Summit was the primary public diplomacy event at the 2012 Chicago Summit that took place from May 19-21.

NATO’s summit in Chicago this weekend is unlikely to see much debate over the future of its controversial ‘out-of-area’ operations. Instead, prominent concerns over maintaining capabilities in an age of austerity will likely dominate the debate.

CHICAGO – NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen will join this year’s Young Atlanticist Summit in Chicago to discuss the NATO agenda and priorities for the future. Setting the stage for the official NATO Summit, the Secretary General’s speech to young professionals will be his first on-the-record event before more than fifty heads of state converge on Chicago. 

CHICAGO – Top NATO, US, and foreign government leaders will join this year’s Young Atlanticist Summit in Chicago to discuss challenges and priorities for the future of the Alliance.

As part of the Atlantic Council's mission to foster the next generation of transatlantic leadership, the Council hosted its Young Atlanticist delegates from Europe and partner countries at the 2012 GLOBSEC conference.

As NATO and the EU have shelved enlargement - the juiciest “carrot” motivating reform in aspirant countries - it is even more crucial for the transatlantic community to refine existing institutional frameworks for engagement in order to prevent reform inertia - or worse - backsliding.

In the run-up to NATO’s 2012 Chicago summit, Alliance members look ever more determined to leave Afghanistan sooner rather than later. In spite of the flurry of media reports, recent security incidents involving members of both the Afghan and the American security forces can be considered tragic exceptions.

The Arab Awakening has advanced democracy through the Middle East and North Africa but the ripple effects created by the leak of military weaponry into surrounding unstable and conflict areas pose long-term national and regional security implications.  This should be a critical factor for the international community when weighing potential intervention.

When a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire in a small town’s public square, barely anyone expected this act to lead to a revolution in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and the Arab world. The fall of the three dictatorships initiated a new phase in a worldwide democratic wave that has been remaking the world since 1989.

A great deal of the Western press coverage of Vladimir Putin’s re-election was optimistically devoted to proclaiming the end of Putin(ism) due to swelling protests, the rising middle class, demographic decline, and stagnation in Russia’s high-cash, low-growth, oil-dependent economy. Nonetheless, it is not a given that Putinism will recede to make way for greater democratization.