“Transatlantic allies have much to gain from not only sticking together but broadening and deepening their cooperation,” contends Benjamin Tallis in a new report.
Despite the very real challenges to NATO and EU countries, they lack a unified strategic response: key players like Germany and Canada struggle to adapt, drifting away from their partners, including the United States.
In Neo-idealism: Grand strategy for the future of the transatlantic community, Tallis proposes a way to overcome the current strategic deficit and calls for a comprehensive strategy to tackle emerging threats.
The proposed grand strategy would address external threats and internal weaknesses by harnessing the strengths of transatlantic countries, namely our core liberal democratic values and fundamental freedoms.
Tallis urges Western nations and like-minded countries to band together to champion and promote these ideals, and to show Russia, China, Iran, and other threats that liberal democracy won’t be cowed by authoritarianism.
His strategy is built on eight key pillars: value primacy, military readiness, effective internationalism, geo-economic realism, inclusive dynamism, ecological modernization, democratic futurism, and societal cohesion.
By starting with shared values, neo-idealism offers a rallying point for transatlantic allies to collaborate effectively, leverage the collective power of democracies, and unite politicians, governments, businesses, and civil society in a common cause.
“We have not yet collectively gotten our act together,” writes Tallis. Given the existential threats facing the transatlantic community it is past time that we do.
To learn more, read the full paper here:
Benjamin Tallis is a senior associate at the Centre for Liberal Modernity (LibMod) in Berlin, where, in 2024, he is launching a major new project – the Democratic Strategy Initiative – to build the strategic capacity and culture liberal democracies need to win the systemic competition.
— From the Macdonald-Laurier Institute magazine Inside Policy
