Drifting Apart: Transatlantic Relations in the Middle East

Participants of the Mediterranean Advisory Group in Berlin

Deputy Secretary General & Department Head for European and International Cooperation at Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Dr. Gerhard Wahlers, and MP Roderich Kiesewetter, Representative of Foreign Affairs for the CDU/CSU-Caucus in the German Bundestag

Discussion with MP Peter Beyer, Coordinator for Transatlantic Cooperation at the German Federal Foreign Office & Member of the German Bundestag

Koert Debeuf, Director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP) Europe and Dr. Cornelius Adebahr, Associate Fellow with the Alfred von Oppenheim Center for European Policy Studies at the German Council on Foreign Relations

Michael Singh, Managing Director & Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute, and Dr. Dorothée Schmid, Senior Research Fellow and Head of Turkey Program, Institut Français des Relations Internationales

Christopher Dickey, Foreign Editor at The Daily Beast

Panel discussion of the Mediterranean Advisory Group

On 13-14 December 2018, the Mediterranean Advisory Group of the KAS Regional Program South Mediterranean came together in Berlin for a meeting entitled "Drifting Apart: Transatlantic Relations in the Middle East." Experts from the US, Europe and the Southern Mediterranean discussed the US and European approaches towards the region, debated Middle Eastern controversies and fallacies in previous transatlantic approaches, and identified the key areas of diversion and agreement within the transatlantic alliance.

The meeting started with a conversation with MP Peter Beyer, Coordinator for Transatlantic Cooperation in the German Federal Foreign Office and Member of the German Bundestag, and went on in the form of panel discussions on policy approaches of the EU and the US as well as new approaches for the transatlantic partnership. The group also had the chance for a conversation with MP Roderich Kiesewetter, Representative of Foreign Affairs for the CDU/CSU Caucus in the German Bundestag.