Brent Scowcroft on Renewing the Transatlantic Community Through Global Partnerships

On April 3, the fifth annual Christopher J. Makins Lecture featured a unique and forward looking conversation with Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, who has served, in both official and unofficial capacities, as a national security advisor to every US president since Richard Nixon.

General Scowcroft is one of the pre-eminent stewards of the Atlantic community in US history. During the presidency of George H.W. Bush, he served as a leading architect of the transatlantic alliance’s renewal after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union. Twenty years later, the transatlantic community faces an array of decisive challenges, including a deep financial crisis and falling defense budgets, withering political confidence, geopolitical turbulence, and strategic uncertainty.

The lecture and following reception was generously hosted by the Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the United States, H.E. Yousef Al Otaiba.

New Atlanticist Commentary

About the Christopher J. Makins Lecture Series

Launched in 2005, this annual lecture series honors the memory of the Atlantic Council’s former president, Christopher Makins, by bringing together European and American top minds and policymakers to discuss major challenges facing the Atlantic Community. The series focuses on the state of the Atlantic partnership and its future direction. By providing a platform for discussion and by stimulating provocative discourse on the importance of the Atlantic alliance, we carry on the heritage and vision of this extraordinary Atlanticist. Previous transatlantic leaders who have delivered the Makins Lecture are Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski (2006), President Vaira Vike-Freiberga (2007), Dr. Henry Kissinger (2009), and Lord George Robertson (2010).