Welcome to the Marshall Center

Dr. Raphael Perl (right), director of the Partnership for Peace Consortium, speaks to one of the participants during the event (Courtesy Photo/RELEASED)

GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, Germany (Dec. 27, 2012) – The Partnership for Peace Consortium has created a new working group to tackle future threats and examine what’s on the horizon in 2013 and beyond.

The Emerging Security Challenges working group met for the first time at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Nov. 29-30. Eleven people attended the meeting, which was used to define its scope, as well as discuss a working plan through 2013. Participants from Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States comprised the first meeting.

“The diversity of the group -- with experts on technology, science, cyberspace, finance, geopolitics and history -- as well as the infusion of new members to the Consortium, made for informed and considered discussion,” said Graeme Herd, one of the chairmen of the group and senior program adviser/senior fellow, Geneva Center for Security Policy in Switzerland.

The consortium operations staff is located at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, Marshall Center director, serves as the chairman of the consortium’s Senior Advisory Council.

The consortium suggested the idea in July. According to the original working group concept paper, “… We need to think, talk, discuss collectively about an emerging security environment which is very different from what we are used to. This is true for all of our countries, for the Alliance, and for the whole international community. This environment will continue to change, but how? It will be critical to find compatible, if not similar or even common answers. An ESCWG could develop substantial elements of … such answers.”

Dr. Gustav Lindstrom, head of the Emerging Security Challenges Program, Geneva Center for Security Policy, Switzerland, categorized the first meeting as a productive one.

"It was a pleasure to take part in the discussions. The diversity of the working group participants, both with respect to professional backgrounds and institutional affiliations, enabled fruitful discussions and multiple perspectives,” Lindstrom said.

The working group will meet three more times in 2013, including workshops in March and June. It will also gather for a panel at the International Security Forum in Geneva in April.