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Pardon Our Dust

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Trump, the EU, and NATO

by Allison Wheeler (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) This blog post was written for the course "Current Issues in Global and EU Affairs", which took place from February 11-May 9, 2019. Secretary Pompeo and Secretary General Stoltenberg deliver opening remarks at the NATO Foreign Ministerial Image Credit: US Department of State/Ron Przysucha,  Public Domain This year, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), celebrated its 70 th birthday.   Founded in 1949, NATO has bound western Europe and North America since almost immediately following World War II and has created a close defense alliance between what has grown from just 12 countries to now 29 countries.   NATO at this moment in history is at the center of a potentially pivotal conflict for the transatlantic partnership between the US and the EU. The EU, regarded most prominently and historically as a normative and economic power, has heavily relied on the “hard power” th...

Transatlantic Conversations: A Review of the Leuven Roundtable

By Rafael A. Rodríguez Diaz This blog post was written for the course "Current Issues in Global and EU Affairs", which took place from February 12-April 30, 2018. The Leuven Roundtable. l-r: Prof. Michael Smith, Mr. Alexandros Papaioannou, Mr. Richard Tibbels, Prof. Simon Duke As part of the graduate-level seminar of EURO 596, which explores current issues in global and European Union (EU) affairs, and in the framework of the Jean Monnet ERASMUS+ and Leuven-Illinois project, “Conversations on Transatlanticism and Europe”, 3 students and I participated in a study abroad trip to the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium during the Spring Break of 2018. As part of our agenda, on March 19, we attended a roundtable entitled: “The Transatlantic Community between Contestation and Cooperation”. This round table was divided into two parts: a) “Contestation, Cooperation and Global Threats in the Transatlantic Security Community”; and b) “Transatlantic Competition, Cooperat...

Visiting KU Leuven and Hosting Leuven in Illinois: Strengthening Transatlantic Relationships

By Jessica Mrase CEURO participants visit Brussels. Jessica is fourth from the right, in the beige trench coat. When the CEURO project was in its early stages, I had already fully committed to it. Nothing had been set, and we weren’t sure of any details, but I knew that somehow, I would be a part of it. I believed in the project, the course, and the trips abroad. It was something original and being part of that would be an honor. Returning to Leuven was something I had always thought of doing, but never knew if it would happen. With the CEURO course, I was able to travel back to Leuven and revisit the city that captured my heart two years before when I had studied there for a semester in my undergrad. I had a grand plan of sleeping the entire way across the Atlantic so that I would be ready to hit the ground running as soon as we landed, and that was very much the case. I wanted to serve the others in my group as a guide and show them all the wonderful parts of Leuven. Showing t...