An audience of over thirty leaders from both sides of the Atlantic met in Brussels from April 22-24 for GMF’s Marshall Seminar Brussels on “The New Agenda for Transatlantic Security.” Sponsored by NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division, the Seminar offered key insights into twenty-first century security challenges that face leaders across sectors and national lines. Cyber threats, disease epidemics, climate change: these challenges sit alongside frequently discussed threats such as terrorism and military incursions on the transatlantic security agenda as topics that face all leaders, no matter their profession.

Marshall Seminar Brussels took place amid renewed concern for security in Europe and its immediate neighborhood. Russia and the Islamic State are now simultaneously challenging the system of rules and norms designed to guarantee peace and stability to the entire world. Extremists of all colors across Europe are challenging some of the core values that brought freedom and prosperity to the continent. Cyber criminals are operating with relative impunity across geo-political divides, climate change is increasing forced migration, and some states lack the resources to contain major disease epidemics.

Leading experts from both the United States and Europe offered candid, off-the-record insights into these topics. The Seminar began with a discussed between Ian Lesser, senior director for Foreign and Security Policy at GMF, MEP Morten Helveg Petersen of Denmark, and Fabrice Pothier, director of policy planning at NATO pointed to the interconnected nature of twenty-first century hard security threats. Security challenges in Russia and the Middle East cannot be thought about discreetly—and are linked to regions of the world we are too prone to thinking of separate, such as China. General Kund Bartel of Denmark, chairman of the Military Committee at NATO, encapsulated the insights of the first day of the Seminar in a set of forceful and eloquent evening remarks, underscoring the pivotal role that intergovernmental cooperation through entities such as NATO continue to play in managing diverse security threats.

Yet security is increasingly the concern of all citizens, not just military experts. Days two and three of the Marshall Seminar highlighted insidious challenges that threaten to undermine the very fabric of society. Reflective governance, social inclusion, and diversity are key to halting the development of political extremism, affirmed Srdjan Dvornik, a commentator from Croatia, Brenda Carter, director of the Reflective Democracy Campaign, and Mohamed-Ali Adraoui of the European University Institute. Paul Bell, director of Albany Associates, Ambassador Retired Laurie Fulton of the United States, and Vidhya Ramalingam from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue expanded on this key insight over a candid diner discussion, sharing their personal experiences of combatting extremism across Europe. The private sector, meanwhile, parallels governments in their pioneering strategic approaches to combat the growing threat of cyber terrorism — as became evident listening to the fascinating insights of Peter Wirnsperger, director of enterprise risk services at Deloitte and Thomas Lund-Sorensen, director for the Center for Cyber Security in the Ministry of Defense of Denmark. As the internet and unprecedented transfers of data cross national lines, so too do entire communities of people displaced by climate change, explained Reta Jo Lewis of GMF and a key architect of the U.S. COP climate change policy, Celine Charveriat of Oxfam International, and Mariam Traore Chazalnoel of International Organization for Migration in France. Finally, the last panel of the Seminar considered the security threat that rose alarmingly to the fore in 2014: the spread of disease epidemics such as Ebola. Lt. Col. Christian Janke of NATO, Lt. Col. Katalyn Rossman of the German Medical Service, and Brett S. McClung of the Texas Health Resources

The Marshall Seminar in Brussels follows in the footsteps of the 2013 Marshall Seminar Washington DC, which examined U.S. foreign policy through the lens of diversity and inclusion, and the 2014 Marshall Seminar Berlin, which explored innovative economy and workforce development policies. The third in the series, the Marshall Seminar Brussels leveraged GMF’s transatlantic network and more than 30 years of experience in innovative leadership initiatives to facilitate a dialogue among leaders from all sectors on solutions that could bolster security for our communities. The coming Marshall Seminars will be offered in Bucharest in the fall of 2016 and in Detroit in the spring of 2017, on leadership strategies to strengthen democracy in Central and Eastern Europe and Europe’s Eastern Neighborhood , and on leading through economic transformation towards global engagement respectively.