Nuclear Issues

It's been six months since President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said they came to an agreement on denuclearization, but new satellite images published this week by an independent Washington think tank showed at least 13 previously undeclared missile operating bases in North Korea.

While Washington and the media were preoccupied with James Comey hearings and Donald Trump press conferences this week, what else was going on that we didn't hear about? Or, ought to be paying closer attention to? The World's Marco Werman talked to Nick Burns to find out. 

Pakistan's Ambassador to the U.S. Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry and Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University Adil Najam discuss the ups and downs of US-Pakistan relations and possibilities for engagement under the new US administration.

In this installation of 'Conversations in Diplomacy,' recorded during the Future of Diplomacy Project's annual Europe Week series, guests Muriel Rouyer and Boris Ruge speak with Professor Nicholas Burns about the rise of populism in Europe, the potential outcomes of upcoming elections in France and Germany, and the effect of such factors on the transatlantic relationship.

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.

Last weekend’s deadly attack on an international hospital in Afghanistan was a reminder of the terrible war that grinds on there, with Afghan civilians caught in the crossfire.

Professor Burns discusses the shift in policy and tone coming from Iran, courtesy of its new president, Hassan Rouhani, and what that means for future relations between the U.S. and Iran.

According to the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, currently a Fischer Family Fellow with the Belfer Center’s Future of Diplomacy Project, “Any presidential election is in part a referendum on the 3 a.m. question: Whom do you trust to answer and make a wise decision if the red phone rings in the middle of the night with a nuclear crisis? The remaining weeks of this presidential campaign will focus more on the foreign policy issues that will help Americans make this decision. And it should help concentrate our minds that this month marks the 50th anniversary of the most dangerous moment in modern American history, the Cuban missile crisis.”

Nicholas R. Burns and David Manning, former ambassadors to NATO from their respective countries, respond to the question of whether NATO is still needed. They write: “Will you still need me when I’m sixty-four?” sang the Beatles. NATO is now in its 64th year, and in our view the answer is an unequivocal yes. The alliance still underwrites our security and underpins our prosperity. It gives us a global voice that no member state would enjoy individually. And if “it’s good to talk” in a dangerous world, there is no better trans-Atlantic forum.

"The Nobel Peace Prize Committee cited Obama's dedication to arms control and nonproliferation when announcing last Friday his selection as this year's laureate. If he creates a positive, mutually reinforcing dynamic in the way he presents and sequences the two treaties [NPT and CTBT], it will give momentum and coherence to follow-on negotiations and the agreements that they produce."