Nuclear Issues

Ambassador Douglas Lute, former ambassador to the North Atlantic Council, NATO's principal decision-making body, spoke at the Future of Diplomacy project on NATO's role today, adapting to current threats, and Russia's relationship with NATO and its member States.

North Korea’s nuclear weapons challenge is as serious a crisis an American president has faced since the end of the Cold War. That is why President Trump should tread carefully and wisely before hurtling us toward conflict in Asia.

A key foreign affairs issue for the Trump administration will be its policy on Iran, as was the case also for the Obama administration. But we have no idea what approach it will take, an uncertainty amplified by the fact that Trump has no experience whatsoever in foreign policy, and no idea whose input he will accept in shaping it. It’s not as if we have no information about his attitude – during the election campaign, Trump made his intention on Iran very clear – but, as with other topics, it is unclear how he will act when once he is forced to translate his intentions into action and realizes that reality is far more complicated than he imagined.

On 24 and 25 November 2016 experts from politics and academia, including FDP Executive director Cathryn Clüver, discussed the impact of Brexit on several policy areas in a series of workshops at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. All events took place under Chatham House rules.

Dr. Ian Bremmer, expert in political risk and founder of the Eurasia Group, gave a seminar sponsored by the the Future of Diplomacy Project on Thursday, November 9 at the Harvard Kennedy School, titled “Managing Risk in an Unstable World."

Jens Stoltenberg,NATO Secretary General, discussed the future of the NATO alliance during this speech, given at the Harvard Kennedy School on September 23, 2016. He described the alliance as a responsive organization, capable of adapting to changes in the international security landscape but committed to the continuity of its founding values. In particular, he emphasized the necessity of maintaining a policy of absolute solidarity among member states, especially  in light of the exacerbating civil war in Syria and Russia’s aggressive stance toward countries to the East of NATO member state borders.

Putin and his government seek respect, stability from next U.S. administration, panel says.

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.

​In an off-the-record discussion titled "The Iran Nuclear Deal and Beyond: The Evolution of European Foreign Policy,"​ Helga Maria Schmid, Deputy Secretary General for Political Affairs of the European External Action Service​, ​spoke openly to an audience of HKS faculty, fellow, and students about ​​the EU's important role as "honest broker" throughout the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiations on preventing Iran's nuclear program.

The Iran nuclear deal was officially implemented on Saturday, as Iran successfully fulfilled its initial key nuclear commitments and the international community relieved major sanctions, including unfreezing about $100 billion of Iranian money. Implementation Day was met with applause from deal supporters in the U.S. and Iran, while critics have raised questions about whether Iran will adhere to its requirements and how it will flex its newfound economic power. Also in recent days, the U.S. and Iran agreed to a prisoner swap that led to the freedom of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and others, and negotiated the release of American sailors detained in Iran. What does the arrival of Implementation Day mean for Iran’s nuclear program and nuclear nonproliferation, and how does it bode for the future of U.S.-Iran relations? We asked Belfer Center experts to weigh in on these and related questions.