“It could over time become part of the public debate,” Kupchan said. “It is obviously of importance that the co-chairmen Larry Summers and Henry Kissinger are individuals of considerable visibility and stature.”

Kissinger and Summers also appeared on “The Charlie Rose Show”—a political talk show on PBS—Friday night to discuss the report.

Kupchan said it would be critical to address the attitudes of younger generations to repair the countries’ relationships. In earlier years, he said, people grew up viewing the alliance as indispensable, which is no longer the case.

“That’s not something one can take for granted anymore,” Kupchan said. “We need to invest in the mentalities and attitudes of younger Americans and Europeans.”

BRIDGING THE DIVIDE

The task force, which was formed last April, met four times over the last six months, but also conducted a lot of work more informally through phone calls and e-mails, Kupchan said.

Summers said he and Kissinger, in their capacities as co-chairs, led the meetings.

“We introduced the discussion...and guided the debate,” he said.

After Summers and Kissinger kicked off the group meetings, the committee members would debate the issues, Kupchan said.

“From there on out, it was a group grope,” he said. “My task as the project director was to try to cull from these discussions areas of agreement and to build the document around these areas of agreement and to try to discern what would represent a centrist, bipartisan position.”

Kupchan added that he, Summers and Kissinger took the lead in drafting the report based on the discussions and other correspondence.

Moravcsik said Kissinger and Summers “showed some real diplomacy and statesmanship in dealing with all the conflicting concerns.”

He added that they were right to focus on broad goals for the alliance rather than more specific policy issues.

“From early on, they insisted—as against the initial expectations of the CFR—that the report set forth a balanced vision of the transatlantic relationship, rather than focus on dozens of immediately ‘actionable’ policy recommendations,” he said. “That was very appropriate to a report on the general state of relations with the U.S.’ most important alliance partners.”Kupchan said he was impressed by the willingness of participants to leave politics out of the discussions.

“I found it to be a remarkably nonpartisan enterprise,” he said. “We had a pretty wide range of individuals across the political spectrum, and I think that pretty much everyone checked their political hat in the cloak room and the debate was very much on the substance of the issues and the intellectual debates.”