My longtime friend Jim Barron had quite a vision in the 1990s for what became the Atlantic Rim Network (later Atlantic Rim Institute). He was dogged in developing an extraordinary idea, philosophy, entity, and network based on the belief that the Atlantic Rim is “a body of water surrounded by a state of mind.”
This "New Atlanticism" emphasized the role of dynamic metropolitan regions engaged in cooperative problem-solving at the sub-national level. It moved well beyond old-fashioned models anchored in the United States and Western Europe to include, as well, Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Arctic. This "New Atlanticism" came in response to the endless rhetoric at the time about the burgeoning Pacific Rim and ... it was way ahead of its time.
I partnered with Jim in helping to realize this vision. Let there be no mistake, however, that he labored mightily and often as an undeterred solo pilot in landing this big idea and, over time, engaging hundreds of people and organizations across four continents. Now more than 30 years later, it's clear how much we could benefit right now from this kind of people-to-people civic diplomacy as issues rage from Greenland to Canada to Venezuela to Ukraine.
The abstract pictured here is from a 2003 article Jim and I authored about this "New Atlanticism" for the first issue of Suffolk University's Parallax: Journal of International Perspectives. We're happy to share the full article with anyone requesting it.
