International Relations

As the 70th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) approaches in early April, the world’s oldest and most successful military alliance of democratic nations faces serious and complex challenges to its purpose, effectiveness, and unity.

In a Belfer Center report released at the Munich Security Conference in February, former U.S. Ambassadors to NATO Douglas Lute and Nicholas Burns underscore 10 major challenges and offer recommendations to bolster this critically important alliance.

Former NATO Ambassador Douglas E. Lute joined the Belfer Center in April as a Senior Fellow with the Center’s Future of Diplomacy Project.

International Security is America’s leading journal of security affairs. It provides sophisticated analyses of contemporary security issues and discusses their conceptual and historical foundations. The journal is edited at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center and published quarterly by the MIT Press.

"Belfer Center Newsmakers" highlights members of the Belfer Center community who have been featured recently in the news.

Following the recent appointment of Ashton B. Carter as deputy secretary of defense, we asked Carter about the challenges and opportunities of his new position. Carter, an on-leave member of the Belfer Center Board of Directors, is a former director of the Belfer Center and was co-director of the Center’s Preventive Defense Project until leaving in 2009 to serve as under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.

Ashton B. Carter, a member of the Belfer Center Board of Directors is a former director of the Belfer Center and was co-director of the Center’s Preventive Defense Project until leaving in 2009 to serve as under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. Following his recent selection as deputy secretary of defense, we asked Carter about the challenges and opportunities of his new position.

The Belfer Center's Graham Allison, Nicholas Burns, Ashraf Hegazy, Joseph S. Nye, and Stephen Walt consider the U.S.'s shifting foreign policy in the Middle East.

Quotes on Newsmakers Page

In March, Robert Rotberg hosted "Sudan at the Crossroads: Transforming Generations of Civil War into Peace and Development," a two-day conference to determine the best steps for confronting the challenges ahead for Sudan and Darfur. He convened a number of Sudanese leaders and experts in the fields of diplomacy, human rights advocacy, foreign aid, international business, and conflict prevention. Their task was to produce a "report card" on the issues in Sudan and come up with a workable plan for peace.