Born in Warsaw, Geremek escaped from the Warsaw ghetto when he was 11and remained in hiding until the end of the war. His father was murdered at Auschwitz. In August 1980, he was one of 64 Polish intellectuals to sign a document supporting Lech Walesa’s striking shipyard workers. Geremek became one of the giants of Solidarity. He was imprisoned for a year after martial law was declared in 1981.

I first met Bronislaw Geremek a few years later when Deputy Secretary of State John C. Whitehead invited Lech Walesa and Solidarity’s senior advisors to the home of John Davis, U.S. Ambassador to Poland, to show American support for Solidarity. We had waited for hours for Walesa and his delegation to arrive; we worried that they had been arrested on the way to the Ambassador’s residence. There was a knock on the door and Walesa, Geremek, and other leaders of Solidarity filled the living room with their courage and hope. They had a vision for ending communism in their country. They believed in the principals of the Helsinki Final Act and the UN Declaration of Human Rights. They said America was a beacon to guide their own struggle. We talked, we listened, we laughed and we were inspired. I practiced that evening my first (and still only) two words of Polish: wszystko mozliwe — “all things are possible.”

On our next trip to Poland, we went to Gdansk to see Walesa in his home city. During that visit, and on each of our subsequent visits, we became ever more convinced that Solidarity would defeat authoritarianism and that Poland would some day be again a free country.

Bronislaw Geremek was one of the leaders of the Roundtable Negotiations that brought Solidarity to power. He served as Poland’s Foreign Minister from 1997 to 2000. These were the same years I had the honor to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, which brought me in close contact with Minister Geremek on numerous occasions. As an Assistant Secretary, I was not a person of much rank, but I will always remember the grace and kindness with which Foreign Minister Geremek treated me.

During his years as foreign minister, Geremek served simultaneously in 1998 as the head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, where he made ending the wars in the Balkans and stopping the murder in Kosovo continuing commitments. He negotiated Poland’s entry into NATO and stood with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and leaders from Hungary and the Czech Republic at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, in March 1999 to celebrate Poland’s transformation from a Warsaw Pact vassal to a member of the world’s most successful alliance. When NATO heads of state and government met in Washington in April 1999 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of NATO’s creation, Bronislaw Geremek was there not just to reap the benefits of NATO membership but to see Poland join the military effort to end Milosevic’s killing in Kosovo.

During and after his service as foreign minister, Bronislaw Geremek’s opinions were both widely sought and carefully considered. I last had a chance to visit with Geremek at the NATO Summit in Riga, Latvia, in 2006. We marveled that NATO was now meeting in the capital of a Baltic state. Who would ever have believed that they, too, would be free so soon? At least one friend had been urging him to write his memoirs. Sadly, we will now never have his personal recollections of his accomplishments, but we will have our memories of what he did for the cause of freedom.

Marc Grossman is a Vice Chairman of The Cohen Group. He was Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs at the Department of State 2001-2005. He is a member of GMF’s Board of Trustees.

As I crossed the border from Turkey to Georgia, the border agent checking my U.S. passport smiled, gave me an American-style thumbs up, and said in broken English, “United States good, John McCain good.” This was in April, only two weeks, after Georgia received disappointing news at the NATO Summit in Bucharest that a Membership Action Plan (MAP) would be postponed. Yet Georgia’s efforts to tie itself to the West had not been lost even on that young border agent.

However, the culture, beauty, and charm of Georgia’scapital city, Tbilisi, located in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, has been masked of late by the escalation of violence in its separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to the northwest, ethnic conflicts that erupted following the collapse of the Soviet Union. A fragile democracy, Georgia continues to be crippled by its so-called “frozen conflicts.” Still considered part of Georgia, but under the influence of Russia, this patch of land has become a new frontier of delicate relations between Russia and the West. Two months ago, the tension between Georgia and Russia flared dramatically when Russia shot down a Georgian reconnaissance drone. Russia accused Georgia of violating the UN ceasefire agreement by flying an unmanned aircraft over Abkhazia. Diplomatic intervention by Europe and the United States quieted the disagreement, but tensions remained high. Last week, violence continued with bomb explosions in the Abkhaz town of Gagra and the capital, Sukhumi, prompting Abkhazia to close its border with Georgia, worrying many in the West that the Georgia-Abkhazia conflict could take a turn for the worse.

GMF’s Ron Asmus and several co-authors released a policy brief last month, and in it, they contend that the current peace process in the Georgia-Abkhazia conflict has failed. While Russia initially played the role of peacekeeper almost a decade ago, recently it is has become more of a facilitator in party negotiations, bringing into question its impartiality in furthering the peace process. “There is an urgent need for an internationalized framework in which a true, multi-faceted and genuine peace process can develop that could respond to the Abkhaz and Georgian peoples’ genuine interest beyond geopolitical or status aspirations,” Asmus and co-authors Svante Cornell, Antje Herrberg, and Nicu Popescu write in “Internationalizing the Georgia-Abkhazia Conflict Resolution Process: Why a Greater European Role is Needed.” In it, the authors advocate for the international community, in particular the NGO community, to become more involved. A sustainable peace is only feasible if there are commitments from the outside. “The growing tensions and the inappropriateness of the current format requires a reframing of the issues at hand and a restructuring of the negotiations alongside a vision of providing a suitable implementation strategy that will allow those commitments resulting from a peace process to be monitored and evaluated,” they write.

Georgia, whose hope of being extended MAP and further integrating itself into the Euroatlantic community was recently put on hold, has accused Russia of fueling the tensions. While visiting Prague on July 8, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticized Russia’s behavior toward Georgia, saying that it is only adding to the tension in the region. Secretary Rice is on a three-week tour of the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Georgia, where she will renew U.S. support for Georgia’s application to MAP.

Russia makes no bones about the fact that it does not want Georgia to gain MAP, feeling that it would threaten its regional interests. But even as Russia and Georgia argue over Georgia’s alliance membership, few are paying attention to the Abkhaz people. Asmus, Cornell, Herrberg, and Popescu write that the “human consequences” of the conflict have yet to be addressed. “Economically, the Abkhaz and others remaining in Abkhazia have seen their situation stagnate, as they have fallen behind in terms of their overall development, even if some stabilization has occurred recently.” Once considered the “Riviera” of the Soviet Union, this region of the Black Sea coast still lags behind socially and economically. This is in sharp contrast to the rest of the South Caucasus, which has been experiencing high rates of economic growth since 2005.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, not much has changed between the capital cities of Tbilisi and Sukhumi; rather, change has come in the international community outside of the conflict, according to the brief’s authors. Such changes could be the stepping stone to further the peace process and bring to a close the region’s unresolved issues. “The goal must be to create a different political balance that restores lost credibility and balances a Russian role that has long ceased to be neutral,” they write. And “while a solution to the conflict belongs ultimately to governments, both Georgian and Abkhaz NGOs can play an important role in diffusing tension and changing stereotypes.”

As I write, I am reminded of Tbilisi’s “wishing trees,” draped with ribbons and scraps of cloth, these trees—symbolizing the hopes and dreams of their owners—line the footpaths that carry you up to the city’s most famous landmark “Mother Georgia.” And like the young border agent I met, enthusiastic about the West, his dreams, like that of his beloved country, of becoming a full-fledged member of NATO and entering into the fold of the West is fragile at best, as long as the Abkhazia-Georgia conflict continues.

The international community has the tools, knows the lessons learned, all it needs now is the will to act and put the process in motion.

After much speculation, Barack Obama’s team has announced he will travel to Europe this summer  – to Paris, Berlin, and London (the dates have not yet been announced for security reasons, although the London stop is rumored to be planned as early as next week).  John McCain visited Europe last March once it became clear that he would be the presumed Republican nominee, travelling with Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman, talking about global warming, and meeting many European leaders such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy for the third time.  Just the same, McCain ran into questions about his support for the war in Iraq.  Obama, presumably, should have an easier time here.  He can say, “I know you disagreed with the war in Iraq, so did I.”  But as I’ve noted earlier on this blog, Obama is not likely coming to Europe just to listen to criticism about the past.  When describing his planned trip, he noted pointedly that France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are our allies in Afghanistan where we can expect him to want Europeans to do more.  Others such as Roger Cohen have suggested Obama should even broach asking for help on Iraq, a subject the transatlantic allies have largely agreed not to raise in polite company. 

Even though Obama seeks foreign policy exposure, he will need to be careful from a domestic American perspective.  John Kerry in 2004 was labeled as “too French” for his eagerness to consult with Europeans, and one can imagine those ready to criticize Obama if he appears “too European” in his views.  The hubbub this week over whether Obama should speak at the Brandenberg Gate in Berlin has a domestic undertone apart from German concern that it would be campaigning abroad – Obama could be challenged for acting “too presidential” (a la JFK or Reagan) before he’s won the election, just as he was criticized for using an image on his speaking podium that too closely resembled the seal of the U.S. presidency.   All this suggests he will be walking a number of fine lines, even in front of a European audience that has been waiting breathlessly to meet him.

Update:  Mitt Romney, former-Republican candidate for president recently declared that he thinks Obama “looks towards Europe for a lot of his inspiration” whereas McCain, he says, “is going to make sure that America stays America.”

Many of these multilateral organizations do outstanding work and serve the globe with aplomb, but many also have become outmoded, irrelevant, and bureaucratic. A recent article in the Economist points out that the world economy has changed and suggests that the current set up of the G-8 must be reinvented. Circumstances have changed, and the current club doesn’t necessarily reflect the new global economic makeup. Perhaps emerging economies, such as China, India, and Brazil, need to be included, as well as an African representative, the piece suggests.

Another article, entitled “The Next World,” appeared in the Germany weekly Die Zeit last week before the G-8 summit, arguing that a new era of “flexible associations” will emerge. The author, Parag Khanna, asks how the UN, G-8, or IMF expect to set the tone for a globalized world when globalization follows another principle: decentralization. The decentralization of power from these older clubs, and especially from the United States, is perhaps what the next world will feature. Khanna traveled to a handful of so-called “second-world” countries, including Turkey, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia, and was surprised to find an extraordinary flexibility in each. For example, India buys weapons from Russia, is expanding trade with China, and just signed an agreement with the United States on the civil use of atomic energy. Kazakhstan is modernizing its pipelines with Russian help, working with the EU on having their turn at the helm of the OSCE, and proclaiming a strategic partnership with China. “No one trusts anyone else, not the least the United States,” Khanna writes.

The question to ask is whether we need to seriously reform the world’s clubs to represent a better cross-section of the global relations and economy. After all, integrating economies, as with France’s and Germany’s steel industries in 1955, was how the European Union found its feet. A few dominoes may fall in the process, but this could be a welcome impetus for rethinking the way we handle our multilateral clubs.

GMF Transatlantic Fellow Joe Quinlan, in a just-released opinion piece, says the strong economic ties of the United States and Europe of the last eight years has been the “glue” of the transatlantic partnership. And while many talk of a renewed political relationship next year on issues ranging from the Middle East to climate change, what about that valuable economic relationship? U.S. voters have grown skeptical of globalization. The dollar is low, and jobs are moving to developing countries. Will a new administration in 2009 also bring a new era of closed borders between the United States and Europe when it comes to trade and investment?

Looking to the campaign trail, it is no surprise, then, that the credentials of both presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, have come under scrutiny when it comes to trade and overseas investment. Obama has taken some anti-trade stances, going so far as suggesting amendments to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). McCain, a proponent of freer trade, has consisently voted for agreements that promote openness and greater liberalization. However, as Quinlan describes in “The U.S. Presidential Election and the Prospects for Trade and Investment,” the longer the U.S. economy muddles along in its feeble state, the greater the anti-trade pressure on any U.S. president, Democrat or Republican.” Such anti-trade rhetoric according to Quinlan could be problematic for Europe as any move toward protectionism by the United States could retard the transatlantic economy specifically, and may even affect the global economy more generally.

“A more protectionist tone from a new administration in Washington would likely engender a similar response or course of action from Europe, leaving the world dangerously exposed to a rising tide of protectionism,” Quinlan writes.

While “change” is in vogue on both sides of the Atlantic, Europeans, according to Quinlan, should be “tempered since the next president of the United States will be elected by a populace weary of foreign commitments and increasingly suspicious of the benefits of globalization, including cross-border trade and investment flows.” Democrat or Republican, a new president in the first part of his administration will be less open on trade issues, reacting to the mood of a country still recovering from a financial mortgage crisis, rising oil prices, and a weakening dollar, Quinlan says.

The transatlantic economy, the largest in the world, is strong. However, Quinlan wonders “whether the policies of the next U.S. administration will help or hinder the growth and prosperity of the transatlantic economy remains to be seen. If protectionist rhetoric in the United States translates into policy beginning in 2009, many in Europe will come to miss President Bush.”

It’s an unusual prediction, but one that could prove surprisingly true.

After 18 months of preparation, TFMI was finally becoming real.

55 emerging leaders representing more than 20 countries have arrived to participate in the first annual Transatlantic Forum on Migration and Integration (TFMI). They are a diverse group: from the business sector, governments, media, academia, and the nonprofit sectors. They come from both sides of the Atlantic and the Pacific. They have diverse views on the challenges and opportunities presented by ongoing migration flows. And they venture to start something totally unique in the next four days: a transatlantic learning community of young leaders who work on migration and integration issues around the globe.

TFMI hopes not to be a normal conference. With its variety of contents and formats, it aims to challenge perspectives and views. The range of issues to be discussed will be broad: starting with a general introduction by Dr. Joseph Chamie on the first night, participants have the opportunity to engage in focused workshops on Thursday: on local integration policies, migration control, migration and the media, migration and development, national identity and asylum and refugees.

We hope that TFMI 2008 in Pommersfelden is going to be the beginning of a long-lasting global network on migration and integration issues.

I want to invite all participants to comment on this post on anything you would like to say about TFMI.

Though the United States has had its own history with “amnesties” for undocumented migrants (it legalized 2.7 million under a bill passed in 1987), Southern Europe has enacted mass legalizations in much more recent memory. Bordering the Mediterranean, the countries of Spain, Italy, Greece, and Portugal saw large influxes of unauthorized migrants and growing informal economies throughout the 1990s and 2000s. In an effort to bring undocumented migrants out of the shadows and into the taxpaying workforce, all four countries conducted periodic amnesties which (at the time) provoked significantly less political outcry than the United States has experienced over Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

A recent New York Times article details the aftermath of the most recent Spanish amnesty for the undocumented, which has had benefits, such as increased tax revenue, but also drawbacks, such as possible inflows of more undocumented migrants in anticipation of amnesties in the future. The case study raises a number of questions for both Europe and the United States: Have the economic, social, and humanitarian benefits of amnesties outweighed the costs to the host society? Will similar amnesties in Southern Europe be feasible in the future, given Northern European opposition (strongest in France) and growing anti-immigrant movements in Italy and Spain? Are there other feasible solutions to dealing with the problem of unauthorized migration, and are border enforcement measures effective in an increasingly globalized and mobile world? And finally, what can the United States learn from the political compromises in Europe to form a truly comprehensive immigration reform?

To be sure, the similarities between Southern Europe and the United States – long borders, unauthorized migration flows, and significant informal economies – should not to be ignored. However, the economic climate of the 1990s and early 2000s (when most of the European amnesties took place) stands in stark contrast to the current economic outlook of the United States in light of the credit crunch, increased fuel prices, and a possible recession. Given economic worries and the heated nature of the immigration debate, it seems that a mass legalization measure would cost any American leader a great deal of political capital. Senators McCain and Obama should keep this in mind, as both have made campaign promises to fix the broken immigration system during their respective administrations.

There are three reasons why making progress now is critical. 

• First, a sound G-8 statement on the preferred design of the post-2012 climate system would make reaching a good international climate agreement easier.  By signaling what G-8 nations are prepared to do to mitigate their emissions over the next decade or so and what they expect from other major emitters, G-8 leaders could give the international community a clear picture of where global climate negotiations should head.
• Second, bypassing the Bush administration would unnecessarily increase the risk that the United States will not join the next climate agreement. Most liberals in Congress will support any environmentally credible and economically affordable climate agreement that emerges from global diplomatic talks.  In contrast, conservatives in Congress will be suspicious of any new climate agreement that imposed substantial costs on the U.S. economy (likely), particularly if China has somewhat different obligations than the United States (also likely).  Any G-8 consensus endorsed by President Bush this year, however, would help soften possible conservative opposition, perhaps even winning over members of Congress who opposed the Kyoto Protocol. 
• Third, pushing off all major decisions until next year would jeopardize the internationally agreed upon goal of concluding a climate agreement in 2009. The post-2012 climate negotiations are politically and technically complex.  Trying to resolve all major issues in calendar year 2009 would strain the international process.

So, what could be accomplished at the G-8 this July?  Quite a lot.  My recently published German Marshall Fund policy brief explains where progress should be possible.  In short, the United States could accept Europe’s call for all developed nations to assume legally binding emission targets if Europe joins with the United States in pressing China, India and other major developing country emitters to also take on new legally binding climate commitments (but not necessarily national emission targets).  I welcome your reactions on this idea.

 Nigel Purvis - President, Climate Advisers

Certainly we should expect that Democratic and Republican candidates alike will ask Europe to do more in Afghanistan:  Obama has called for Germany to lift the ban on combat operations and John McCain has called for NATO members to remove their national caveats.  Yet, there are also differences, most importantly in the priority the candidates give to Afghanistan.  Barack Obama has called for a redeployment of U.S. troops to Afghanistan, saying Iraq has distracted from the battle against Al Qaeda, while John McCain disagrees, arguing that the continued troop presence in Iraq is essential for stability in the region.  Europeans were cautious about their ability to do more at this year’s NATO summit in Bucharest, but it is widely thought that it will be harder to say no to a new American president than to President George W. Bush.  Doing more may not mean more troops, as I’ve heard it suggested that more help on reconstruction would be even more useful than additional European troops.  But it makes you wonder, if we’re not careful, is there a risk of a transatlantic clash of expectations?