On November 6, the Atlantic Council partnered with the Brookings Institution and the Munich Security Conference to host the Munich Security Conference Core Group Meeting. The Core Group Meeting, an offshoot of the larger Munich Security Conference, brings together an exclusive group of top-level policymakers and officials to frankly and openly exchange ideas on the most pressing transatlantic issues in a not-for-attribution environment.

Under the patronage of Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state of the United States, and chaired by Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, Atlantic Council President Frederick Kempe, and Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott, the meeting convened roughly sixty high-ranking decision-makers and experts from Europe, the Middle East, and the United States.

The participants in the MSC Core Group Meeting included: US Senator John McCain, former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Franco Frattini, former German Minister of Defense Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, former US Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar, President of the New America Foundation Anne-Marie Slaughter, Chairman of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies Prince Turki Al Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, and Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aleksey Yurievich Meshkov.

Topics for discussion included the present NSA spying scandal, cybersecurity issues, Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations, perspectives on the future of transatlantic relations, and the transatlantic community’s role in addressing difficult global security challenges, from ending the Syrian civil war to curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Image: (Photo: Dennis H. Kahn/Imagelink Photography )