Nuclear Issues

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.

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.

The godfather of Russia’s military intervention in Syria is Yevgeny Primakov, a former prime minister and intelligence chief and for decades his nation’s leading Arabist. A hint of Primakov’s influence on Russian President Vladimir Putin came in the unusual eulogy that Putin delivered at his friend’s funeral in Moscow four months ago.

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.”

"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."

As Americans learned all too dramatically on 9/11 and again during the financial crisis this autumn, we inhabit a rapidly integrating planet where dangers can strike at any time and from great distances. And when others -- China, India, Brazil -- are rising to share power in the world with us, America needs to spend more time, not less, talking and listening to friends and foes alike.