Nuclear Issues

Staffing gaps and significant personnel changes at the State Department have raised concerns about the direction of U.S. foreign policy, especially amid public statements by President Donald Trump concerning American alliances and positions on issues around the world. Ambassador Cameron Munter invites Ambassador Nicholas Burns to share his insights and ideas, including on timely topics such as the U.S.-Russia relationship following the re-election of Vladimir Putin, Transatlantic relations and changing perceptions about the future role of NATO, and a possible meeting between President Trump and his North Korean counterpart on nuclear nonproliferation and security.

Ambassador Burns was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under President George W. Bush. Prior to that assignment, he was also U.S. Ambassador to NATO. Currently, Burns is the Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and also director of The Future of Diplomacy Project.

"As bad as Trump's first six months have been, there are a number of major foreign-policy blunders he hasn’t made yet and for which we should therefore be grateful. Unfortunately, there are also signs he's contemplating several of them, and plunging ahead may look more tempting as his political fortunes erode. The more desperate he gets, the more he may be inclined to divert attention from his incompetence here at home by stirring up trouble somewhere else."

Professor Nicholas Burns appeared on CNN to speak about the week's chaos in the White House, as well as recent events in North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. 

Professor Nicholas Burns and Future of Diplomacy Project Senior Fellow, David Ignatius, in conversation with Charlie Rose about the Trump administration on the national security stage.

"...[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."

"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..."

"Certainly the most fascinating diplomatic move this week was the tripartite meeting in Doha Monday among the American, Russian and Saudi foreign ministers to discuss the situation in Syria. This means they also must have discussed — take a deep breath here — Iran, Lebanon, Hizbollah, Turkey, Yemen, Iraq, three different Kurdish political/military organizations, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Hamas, Al-Qaeda, the United Arab Emirates military, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt and half a dozen other regional players who now play some role in the situation in and around Syria."

On June 23 and 24, twenty five experts met at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government under the auspices of the Geopolitics of Energy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The group, which included experts from academia, the financial sector, government, and the energy industry, spent an evening and the following full day discussing and debating the possible energy implications of a nuclear deal between the P5+1 and Iran.