Nuclear Issues

While personality has often played a role in high-stakes diplomatic negotiations in the past—for better or worse—experts say successful negotiations depend just as much on professionals who carefully prepare the groundwork. 

In the wake to the highly anticipated encounter between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore, the Center for International Security and Governance hosted a lecture and panel discussion with Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, Executive Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School, on June 14^th 2018. Dr. Enrico Fels, who was also scheduled to participate in the panel discussion, regrettably had to cancel his participation last minute due to personal reasons.

Fmr. U.S. Amb. to NATO Nicholas Burns on Russian diplomats expelled from U.S. and European countries. 

Air Vice Marshall (Ret.) of the Indian Air Force and Fellow at Harvard's Asia Institute, Dr. Arjun Subramaniam spoke at the Future of Diplomacy Project with its Faculty Director, Nicholas Burns about the intricacies of the India-China relationship.

Cathryn Cluver Ashbrook, Executive Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project, discusses the importance of the final wording of the G-20 communique, particularly with respect to the climate change and energy policy dossiers, noting different approaches to achieve transatlantic compromise. She underlines the importance of high-level meetings such as the G-20 to address critical global challenges, including multilateral responses to North Korea’s provocations and the ongoing conflict in Syria.

Sometime over the next several years, the next U.S. president could confront a genuinely dangerous threat from a faraway place — a North Korean missile that can hit U.S. territory with a nuclear warhead. David Ignatius, Senior Fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project examines the threat from across the Pacific.

"...[K]eeping Iran at arm's length (or worse) reduces U.S. diplomatic leverage and flexibility. As long as U.S. Middle East policy remains fixated on its 'special relationships' with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and to some extent Egypt, these states will continue to take U.S. support for granted and ignore U.S. preferences more often than we'd like. But if the United States had decent working relations with every state in the region — including Iran — it could work constructively with any or all of them."

"Now that President Barack Obama has secured more than enough votes in the U.S. Senate to assure the implementation of the agreement with Iran on nuclear issues and sanctions, we can focus on the lessons learned from the process’ intense political dynamics. Three in particular stand out: U.S.-Israeli, U.S.-Saudi Arabian/Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and GCC-Iranian relations. U.S.-Israeli bilateral ties get the most attention these days, but all three are equally important, and turbulent in their own ways."

Can an American president make big, historic changes in the country’s direction with a relatively narrow base of political support? That was the challenge President Obama faced when he pushed health-care reform through Congress, and it’s the same problem he faces now in trying to win support for a breakthrough nuclear deal with Iran.

Obama was confident and combative as he made his case this week on Iran. He delivered a powerful speech enumerating the virtues of the agreement. But he included some partisan lines that riled opponents (and some fence-sitters, too), and it’s questionable whether the speech, masterful as it was in analysis, will add any votes of support.

"Perhaps so much death and destruction take place around the Arab world, at the hands of Arabs, Israelis, Americans and others, because no serious process exists that holds individuals or governments accountable for the atrocities they commit. The International Criminal Court’s indictment of Sudanese President Omar Hassan Bashir for war crimes a few years ago has never been followed up by a serious effort to bring him to court for a fair trial..."