In the first half of this year, numerous top-notch policy recommendations have emerged from the collective intelligence of our community of over 7,000 members.
The Atlantic Insights volume "Highlights January-June 2012" features op-eds on strengthening unity amongst NATO members, improving partnerships after the Arab Spring and finding ways to implement Smart Defense. These articles were written for our Policy Workshop Competition "Your Ideas, Your NATO", sponsored by NATO, the US Mission to Germany, and the Böll Foundation.
The editorial team also selected outstanding articles on other critical issues from our members, such as transatlanticism, Pakistan, and the reasons behind Polish support for German leadership. You can download these articles in PDF and eBook formats Mobi and epub.
In January, we asked our members which topics they thought most deserved our open think tank’s attention this year. The results demonstrated a broad consensus: Iran's nuclear program is a major issue of concern.
Accordingly, our first theme week of the year focused on the Iranian problem and policy solutions for the transatlantic partners. The Atlantic Insights volume "The Iran Debate" is available for download in Mobi, epub, and PDF formats. This theme week also produced a new memo, “From Escalation to Engagement: How to Avoid War”.
Among the authors is Sascha Lohmann, who has also participated in our Ideas with Impact policy workshop competition in 2011. He helped write Atlantic Memo 27, which advocated a new strategy of concrete reciprocity in small steps. This was very different to the approach that was taken at the time. Now, High Representative Catherine Ashton has used much of the same language in her recent statement on the ongoing negotiations. 
Perhaps other ideas from atlantic-community.org member articles will soon become official policy as well. We hope you enjoy this version of Atlantic Insights! The featured articles represent just a small part of the cutting edge writing that our members are bringing to atlantic-community.org every week.
Please follow our open think tank’s work on this webpage as well as on Facebook and Twitter and contribute by commenting and submitting op-eds. Here is some advice for writing op-eds, and the editorial team can help you as well. We're open to new ideas and new perspectives. You don't have to be an expert on foreign policy; you just need to have some good ideas and be able to support your arguments.
Our mission is to give a voice to a new generation of thinkers and to contribute to a more diverse transatlantic strategic community.
Joerg Wolf, editor-in-chief, on behalf of the editorial team
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