Nuclear Issues

Last May, Chinese solar panel manufacturer LONGi signed an agreement with Saudi trading company El Seif Group to establish large-scale solar manufacturing infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. The deal came several months after the Trump administration's imposition of global tariffs on imports of Chinese solar panels and cells.

CSIS hosted Ernest J. Moniz, the co-chair and CEO of NTI and former U.S. Secretary of Energy, for a discussion in which he addressed the increased risk of nuclear miscalculation against the backdrop of today’s rapidly evolving global security threats, the need to rethink outdated nuclear deterrence postures, and the imperative to prevent nuclear proliferations and develop new fuel-cycle policy solutions. Moniz also discussed the future of the Iran nuclear agreement and the current crisis with North Korea. His remarks were followed by a discussion with John Hamre, president and CEO of CSIS.

Though the negotiation leading to the JCPOA took place over a significant stretch of time—indeed, it was built on the foundation of talks that began in 2003—it’s important to remember that the deal contains critical concessions regarding Iran’s production of plutonium, which the United States had been seeking from Tehran since the 1970s, when the two countries were allies.

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.

"The partial budget blueprint released by the White House recently will put U.S. leadership in science and technology at serious risk if Congress goes along. In addition to the obvious damage that would result from the proposed $5.8 billion cut at NIH, the $2 billion cut in applied energy R&D, the $900 million cut in DOE’s Office of Science, the abolition of ARPA-E, and the research cuts at NOAA and EPA, a less immediately obvious potential casualty would be U.S. scientific cooperation with a wide variety of other countries on a wide variety of topics."

During the Future of Diplomacy Project's 2017 'Europe Week' series, diplomats, scholars, and policymakers visited the Kennedy School to examine Europe's greatest challenges. 

The new US president will be operating on a very weak political foundation, is very unlikely to be able to deliver the results he has promised to key constituencies, and seems likely to take dangerous gambles in the international arena. This makes it probable that a cycle of growing disillusion, disappointment and disapproval will set in within a year.