American Secretaries of State

With Trump just back from an Asia trip that ran the gamut of outcomes from negligible to awful, the question turns again to what's going on with U.S. foreign policy. Specifically, we take a look at the gutting of the State Department and the president's pronouncement that "l'etat c'est moi." (Was that him or Louis XIV? I always get them confused. Suffice it to say it was someone whose tastes ran toward gold bathroom fixtures.) We go there--with special guest, former Bush Administration Under Secretary of State and distinguished career foreign service officer Ambassador Nicholas Burns, Stanford's Kori Schake and Georgetown's Rosa Brooks. Tune in.

On the occasion of Remembrance Day, Nicholas Burns delivers a speech at Saint Clement’s Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania about The Great War when, between July 1914 and November 1918, over eighteen million men, women and children perished.

Nicholas Burns joins Andrea Mitchell and Carol Lee regarding Carol's story about potential "quid pro quo" agreement between Micheal Flynn and Turkish officials about potential arrangement between him and Turkish officials related to Turkish cleric in exile, Fethullah Gulen. 

President Donald Trump, in unprecedented fashion, has been able to get the Chinese government to turn the screws on North Korea in hopes of getting Kim Jong Un to halt military provocations, according to a former diplomat who has advised Republican and Democratic presidents.

"The Chinese have done more under President Trump's prodding than any other American president. They signed on to the UN sanctions. There are now individual Chinese sanctions; the central bank governors instructed banks in China to wind up loans to North Korea," Nicholas Burns told CNBC on Friday. He appeared on "Squawk Box," a week before Trump embarks on a trip to Asia, which includes stops in China and South Korea.

KSFR News last week visited with former U.S. ambassador and undersecretary of state, Nicholas Burns. Burns was in town Friday to speak to the Santa Fe Council on International Relations’ annual gala.

Tom Trowbridge began the conversation with Ambassador Burns by asking what diplomacy is and why it is so important.

The presidency of Donald Trump is challenging nothing less than the foundation of American democracy, says R. Nicholas Burns, a former U.S. ambassador and undersecretary of state for President George W. Bush. “That generation between 1945 and the last couple years produced, despite all the problems we have, a stable world,” said Burns. “And I am now worried.”

Amb. Nicholas Burns, Harvard Kennedy School professor, provides insight to North Korea's nuclear threat and the impact of U.S. sanctions.

Former ambassador Nicholas Burns, Harvard Kennedy School professor, predicts a 'fractured' Iraq for the next five or ten years.

Amb. Nicholas Burns, Harvard Kennedy School professor, provides insight to China's long-term goals, the power of President Xi Jinping, and President Trump's foreign policy agenda.