Nuclear Issues

The summit between President Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, ended Thursday without any deal. The two sides failed to reach an agreement due to a standoff over U.S. sanctions on the reclusive nation.

Although Russia has evolved in many ways since 1991, it’s worth taking a second look at the drivers behind the Soviet collapse and assessing which of them may be relevant for today’s Russia or could become relevant in the near to medium-term future.

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.

"...Russia seems doomed to continue its decline ― an outcome that should be no cause for celebration in the West. States in decline ― think of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914 ― tend to become less risk-averse and thus much more dangerous. In any case, a thriving Russia has more to offer the international community in the long run."

"The need for major reforms in the areas of health, education, housing, and even national security strategy are common to many countries, but the ability of Israel's governmental system to deliver these public goods is increasingly in question."

"The nuclear debate in Washington is only about the past, about a notion of this nation as the better of only two options. It's as if the critics are wondering: why must we tinker with everything that made America once spectacular? Endless discussions about whether America is exceptional or not (and whether this president thinks we are or not) are preconditioned on a memory that equates the size of our nuclear arsenal with our own relevance. It is simplicity in its most perverse form. What makes us exceptional is our capacity to adapt to a world that has changed, not holding onto a world dynamic that ended long ago."

Matthew Bunn Presented "The Economics of Reprocessing" to a joint Harvard/Peking University workshop in Beijing.