This seminar is part of the "European Governance" program series.

After decades of ambiguity towards European integration, the United States is pushing for Europe to become a genuine actor in security and foreign policy. As Vice President Biden put it at the 2013 Munich Security Conference, “a strong and capable Europe is profoundly in America’s interest, and I might add, presumptuously, the world’s interest.”

In principle, Europeans have accepted that closer defense cooperation is essential in order to maintain, and hopefully expand, existing military capabilities, and in order to reinforce mutual trust and contribute to a convergence in common goals and strategic cultures. But the sad reality is that decision-makers have not yet been willing to take the necessary decisions and disagree about what that means. In matters of European security and defense, the gap between rhetoric and policy is wider than in every other area of the European agenda, despite ever-shrinking defense budgets, declining capabilities, and the US “pivot.”

The European Council in December of 2013, focusing on defense and security issues for the first time in many years, will have to deliver ambitious projects - and member states will have to deliver when it comes to their implementation. The European Security Strategy from 2003 is in dire need of an update. And the EU’s new High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, who will assume office in 2014, will have the difficult task of developing a genuine "one voice approach", a common European foreign and security policy.

A number of fundamental issues will need to be addressed: European security policy priorities, the EU level of ambition and, even larger, the purpose and influence of the EU in a world in which we will increasingly struggle to make ourselves heard. Are EU countries ready and willing to truly join forces and pool resources?

The talk will address current efforts to enhance European security and defense policy, the political feasibility of further steps, Germany’s responsibility to push the agenda forward, and what these efforts in European defense and security policy mean for the United States.

Wolfgang Ischinger was the Federal Republic of Germany's Ambassador to London from 2006-2008. Prior to this assignment, he was the German Ambassador to the United States of America from 2001 to 2006. In 2007, he also represented the European Union in the Troika negotiations on the future of Kosovo.

Wolfgang Ischinger studied law at the universities of Bonn and Geneva and obtained his law degree in 1972.  He did graduate and postgraduate work at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and at Harvard Law School, Cambridge/USA (M. A., Fletcher School, 1973).

Ambassador Ischinger has published widely on foreign policy, security, and arms control policy as well as on European and transatlantic issues. He is a member of the Trilateral Commission, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and of the Governing Board of SIPRI, Stockholm. He is Co-Chair of the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative (Carnegie Endowment) and a member of the Global Zero Commission. He also serves on the Boards of the Atlantic Council of the U. S., of the American Institute of Contemporary German Studies (AICGS), of the American Academy, Berlin and of SWP, Berlin. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Tübingen.

This seminar is part of the "Europe and the Global Economy" series.

How do geopolitical forces influence international capital markets? In particular, do market actors condition their responses to crisis lending initiatives on the political incentives of major lenders? In this paper, Randall Stone and co-writers Terrence Chapman, Songying Fang and Xin Li  analyze a formal model which demonstrates that the effect of crisis lending announcements on international investment flows is conditional on how market actors interpret the political and economic motivations behind lending decisions on the part of the lender and borrower. If investors believe the decision to accept crisis lending is a sign of economic weakness and lending decisions are influenced by the political interests of the major donor countries, then crisis lending may not reduce borrowing costs or quell fears of international investors. On the other hand, if market actors believe that crisis lending programs, and attendant austerity conditions, will significantly reduce the risk of a financial crisis, they may respond with increased private investment, creating a "catalytic effect."  In this model, the political biases of key lending countries can affect the inferences market actors draw, because some sovereign lenders have strategic interests in ensuring that certain borrowing countries do not collapse under the strain of economic crisis. Although this theory applies to multiple types of crisis lending, it helps explain discrepant empirical findings about market reactions to IMF programs. The implications of their theory is tested by examining how sovereign bond yields are affected by IMF program announcements, loan size, the scope of conditions attached to loans, and measures of the geopolitical interests of the United States, a key IMF principal.

Randall Stone (Ph.D. 1993, Harvard) is Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester.  His research is in international political economy and combines formal theory, quantitative methods, and qualitative fieldwork.  He is the author of Controlling Institutions:  International Organizations and the Global Economy (Cambridge University Press 2011), Lending Credibility:  The International Monetary Fund and the Post-Communist Transition (Princeton University Press, 2002) and Satellites and Commissars:  Strategy and Conflict in the Politics of Soviet-Bloc Trade  (Princeton University Press, 1996), as well as articles in the American Political Science Review, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Review of International Organizations, and Global Environmental Politics.  He has been awarded grants by the NSF, SSRC, NCEEER, and IREX, was the last recipient of the Soviet Peace Prize (1991), and has been a Senior Fulbright Scholar visiting the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin.  He speaks German and Russian fluently and Polish moderately well, and reads all Slavic languages. 

This seminar is part of the "Europe and the Global Economy" series.

The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), if successful, will eliminate trade barriers between the US and the EU, both of which already have free trade agreements with many other countries, including several that are in FTAs with both (Canada, Korea, Mexico to name just a few).  Is TTIP therefore achieving true free trade with this larger group?  No. Restrictive rules of origin apply, and these can potentially interfere with trade and reduce welfare even when compared to a world without any of these FTAs.

Alan V. Deardorff is John W. Sweetland Professor of International Economics and Professor of Economics and Public Policy, University of Michigan.  With a Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University, he has been on the faculty at the University of Michigan since 1970, where he has served as Chair of Economics and now Associate Dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.  His research has included both contributions to the theory of international trade and, with Robert M. Stern, development of the Michigan Model of World Production of Trade, used for analysis of multi-country, multi-sector changes in trade policy.

The process of joining an IO may cause liberalization before membership. Thus studies that only evaluate compliance after membership underestimate the effects. Conditional membership may be one of the most important sources of leverage for IOs.  The rule-makers establish rules that don't go far beyond what they would otherwise do, but rule-takers often must accept a broad range of policy reforms they would not otherwise consider. The influence of accession conditions has been studied in the context of EU and NATO, where sizeable benefits and formal conditions motivate major concessions by applicants. This paper proposes to examine a much less powerful organization, the OECD. Here the qualifications for membership are ambiguous and leave open room for informal pressure for a range of economic reforms. The politics of joining organizations touch closely on concerns about status and legitimacy as well as functional demands for cooperation in complex issue areas. I will examine how OECD membership has motivated specific reforms in regulatory policies and trade in a comparison of the East European transition economies accession with that of Japan, Mexico, and Korea. Statistical analysis of patterns of when countries apply for membership will test for the role of economic and political conditions as well as the political relations among members.