Since 2020, the international community has been witnessing seismic changes in several spheres. COVID-19 has disrupted global production and its supply chains. The war in Ukraine has sparked an energy crisis, induced food insecurity, resulting in acute effects for the most vulnerable. The multilateral system has been profoundly challenged, and climate change and nuclear war threats are on the table. In the context of these compounded crises, the Wider Atlantic has emerged as a crucial element of geopolitical and geoeconomic analysis in world affairs. The session will discuss the prospects of cooperation in the Wider Atlantic that would make it possible for states to collectively tackle common issues. It will also investigate the extent to which such cooperation might shift the gaze from Asia and the Pacific into a Wider Atlantic.
- What are some of the features characterizing the impacts of these compounded crises?
- What are the security, political and economic drivers of the Wider Atlantic—being at the intersection between the Americas, Europe and Africa—in the current global context?
- Would a Wider Atlantic unified strategy be useful as an attempt to quell the crisis?
- What is the role of Africa and Latin America in (re)shaping the Wider Atlantic dynamics?
This article discusses the Wider Atlantic as a re-emerging region of power. Considering the central geostrategic role of the North Euro-Atlantic and the rise of maritime priorities in the political agenda of all coastal states, we demonstrate that the Wider Atlantic is relevant to an informal partnership of trust.
This study argues that Morocco should encourage policymakers in the United States and Europe to think more imaginatively about its role in the Atlantic and elsewhere.
The concept of a “Wider Atlantic” has been finding its way into mainstream discourse, as it is progressively molding into an alternative to the present-day understanding of transatlantic relations. The attention is being refocused to a wider geographic area around the Atlantic basin, which includes Southern Atlantic states in the policy and opinion-shaping conversation (s). With 23 states now comprising the Western Atlantic Coast of Africa, this continent has an ever-growing role to play in the new geopolitical discussions pertaining to a “Wider Atlantic” region. Enlarging the exchange to include states that were previously perceived as the strategic backwater is therefore a reality aimed at engaging a wider range of Atlantic partners, who could potentially contribute to reshape and redefine the existing standards. Hence, the wider Atlantic encourages new forms of multilateralism, as well as a discursive and practical reconfiguration, that account for the change in underlying power dynamics and consequent modern global challenges.
The Atlantic basin faces considerable challenges on multiple fronts. Financial and economic struggles, coupled with political shifts and social turmoil, are reshaping the region’s geopolitical landscape. Unemployment, poverty, violence, migration, extremism, climate change and other problems are on the rise and the need to tackle them effectively is pressing.
This podcast is performed by Danielle Piatkiewicz. The aim of the Atlantic Future Project was to study the rationales of cooperation in the Atlantic area and to suggest strategies to the EU on how to engage with the wider transatlantic relationship in the context of the ongoing redistribution of power and the overall rebalancing of relations around and within the Atlantic space. As the project concluded in December 2016, the results and findings analysed the fundamental trends in the Atlantic basin and to show how changing economic, energy, security, human, institutional and environmental links are transforming the wider Atlantic space. What does this mean in the scope of a joint Atlantic policy?