The death of Ron Asmus, a leading figure of the transatlantic dialogue

Democracy Digest, the excellent blog on democracy and human rights promotion, has published a warm tribute to Ron Asmus, former director of the German Marshall Fund, who just died from cancer. Close to Richard Holbrooke and the "Cold War liberal" tradition Ron Asmus was a key person in the attempts to forge a transatlantic movement in favor of democracy. He played a key role in former communist Eastern European countries and tried to build a transatlantic consensus on the promotion of democracy on the Middle East.
Readit at www.demdigest.net
http://www.demdigest.net/blog/2011/05/in-memoriam-ron-asmus-transatlantic-democracy-advocate/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DemocracyDigest+%28Democracy+Digest%29 

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Anti-Europeanism in the U.S.

In his Foreign Policy blog Simon Tisdall focused on a phenomenon - U.S. aniteuropeanism - that is a lot less studied than anti-Americanism. And he derides "en passant" the poor rationality of the "Europe bashers".
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/07/15/venus_envy?page=0,1

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U.S. liberals regroup: a lesson for Europe

According to the Washbington Post, describing the creation of the "One Nation" group U.S. liberals and progressives react to the rise of the Tea Party. This initiative might be followed by European liberals and progressives that have been brushed aside in quite a few countries by "national-populists" like Geert Wilders in the Netherlands or nationalists in Flanders.
The mere bashing and criticism of conservative governments, like the PS does in France towards Sarkozy, will not be sufficient. The "lib-pros" need a really original narrative that offers a realistic and a real alternative to a rightwing that is sliding from democratic "neoliberalism" to increasingly authoritarian populism.

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Healthcare: transatlantic links through transnational actors

On many issues U.S. and European progressives seem to work on two different planets. Their own national debates seem to carry little similiarities and there are few attempts to get to learn from each other. There are however similarities and comparisons as the healthcare reform debates have shown. Besides somes transnational organizations spanning the world and therefore the Atlantic bring some common discourse to the two respective public fora. The Catholic Church for instance that has played for years an important role in healthcare in European countries, especially Belgium, Germany, Spain and France, and has a definite doctrine on issues directly related to the reform, from the concept of social justice to the concerns about funding abortion.
The Center for American Progress, a center-left think tank close to the Obama administration,has just released an analysis of the approach of the U.S. Catholici church to the reform.
Read it at: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/03/catholic_health.html

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The rebellion of U.S. liberals

The reactions of the liberals in the Democratic Party towards their representatives in Congress who kow tow to a more conservative agenda is a sign that should be followed closely by European progressives. See this article in the Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/06/AR2010030602239_pf.html

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Robert Kuttner on how moderate reformers can stop the right wing craze

Leading liberal writer Robert Kuttner is upset at the right wing's hijacking of popular rage against dire economic conditions. Health care reform has become the target of anger thanks to the brutal "framing" of the issue by extremist rightist zealots backed by "economic royalists".

President Obama, Robert Kuttner adds, is much to consensual to address this major challenge to his policies. The analogy can be made with the European social-democrats who seem "missing in action" in most countries (from Spain to France) or squeezed between a new "Old left" like Die Linke in Germany and rightwing populist leaders that attract the "hard hat" vote.
Read his column here
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/17/AR2009081702363.html?wpisrc=newsletter

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U.S.-Euro support for Arab reform

There is a growing suspicion among human rights advocates and neo-conservatives that a Barack Obama admnistration might downplay or even downgrade human rights diplomacy. In multiple columns and conferences these two circles (that tend to merge on some issues and diverge on others) try to put pressure on the White House and the State Department in order to re-emphasize the need for a strong commitment to “democracy promotion”.No one doubts Obama’s preference for human rights and democracy but the pressure of the economic crisis and the bad taste left bu Bush’s democracy promotion by force have brought back the discourse of the realist and even of Henry Kissinger in Washington. And these two groups fear a return to a form of realpolitk that would not allow “human rights to interfere with economic or security interests”.

On March 10, this shared concern led to the publication in Washington of an open letter to the President that calls for a change in the U.S. traditional policies of supporting authoritarian regimes in the Arab-Muslim world. “U.S. support for Arab autocrats was supposed to serve U.S. national interests and regional stability, write the authors. In reality it produced a region increasingly tormented by rampant corruption, extremism and instability”.

The signers of this letter, although critical of the illiberal positions of Islamism, advocate for a recognition of the right of the non-violent islamist parties to take part in the democratic process. But in order to prevent the scenario of a political scene limited to the clash between Islamists and authoritarian regimes the U.S. should support liberal and secular parties and give them the chance “to establish themselves and communicated their ideas to the populace after decades of repression that left them weak and marginalized”.

Other pundits think that this support of Arab and Muslim democrats should be done at the Atlantic level, blending, as stated by Tamara Wittes (Saban Center at the Brookings Institution) and Richard Youngs (of the Madrid-based international think tank FRIDE), “the reach and credibility of European diplomacy and the punch of American capacity”.
These two authors have published a plan for a Euro-US new partnership on behalf of Arab reform that calls in particular on coordination of policies and the adoption of common criteria on how to reward democratic reform or engage with islamists.
www.brokings.edu/papers
http://www.fride.org/
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