- December 18, 2019
On December 18, 2019, the Aspen Institute Germany hosted a Brown Bag Lunch on “Does the world Need the West? Ideas for the Future of the Liberal Order” with Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, Vice President of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and Head of the Berlin Office, Dr. Franziska Brantner, Member of the German Bundestag and Parliamentary Executive Officer (Bündnis 90/Die Grüne), and Brigadier General (ret.) Rainer Meyer zum Felde, Senior Fellow, Institute for Security Policy Kiel (ISPK), Stiftung Wissenschaft & Demokratie (SWuD). In an interview with Rüdiger Lentz, Executive Director of the Aspen Institute Germany, Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff first highlighted the core theses of his recently published book “Die Welt braucht den Westen: Neustart für eine liberale Ordnung” (The World Needs the West: A New Start for a Liberal Order). With this plea for the renewal of the liberal project, Kleine-Brockhoff called for a “robust liberalism” that represents a contemporary interpretation of democratic liberalism: more faithful to principles and regulations, more modest and more aware of its limits, but at the same time more prepared to defend itself. In this way, the liberal international order could also be preserved in the new power-political reality of competing systems of order. After a parliamentary commentary by Dr. Franziska Brantner and a security policy positioning by Brigadier General (ret.) Rainer Meyer zum Felde, all participants discussed the military strategic feasibility of the proposed ideas.
