Diplomacy and International Politics

During the Trump administration, the usual ways of conducting diplomacy have been upended. Many positions in the State Department have never been filled, and meetings with foreign leaders such as Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin have been undertaken with little advance planning. What effect are these changes having now, and how will they affect ongoing relationships between the United States and its allies and adversaries?

WASHINGTON — American intelligence officials are increasingly convinced that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia is culpable in the killing of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an appraisal that poses challenges to a White House intent on maintaining a close relationship with the kingdom.

Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro joined Harvard Kennedy School Professor Nicholas Burns in a discussion concerning the role Congress should play in foreign policy in the era of President Trump. Castro discussed his upbringing and the civic conscious he gained at a young age alongside his twin brother Julian Castro, which encouraged him to eventually pursue a career in public service. The conversation covered a wide range of foreign affairs topics including immigration, trade, and terrorism. Castro took questions from the audience and voiced his concerns about a variety of global developments and threats and his believe that Congress should take a more active role in these issues.  

According to Nicholas Burns, a former U.S. ambassador who served Bill Clinton and in both Bush administrations, Trump’s approach in Syria has more in common with Obama’s than either would likely admit. “I think that the president’s tweet yesterday was specific enough that he has effectively drawn a red line as well. I think that the president needs to respond to this.”

David W. Miliband, president and CEO of the International Refugee Committee, discussed the global refugee crisis with Kennedy School professor Nicholas Burns at an Institute of Politics event Thursday evening.

At the event, entitled “The Refugee Crisis and What Can Be Done About It,” Miliband and Burns, who served as the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs during the Bush administration, discussed ongoing humanitarian challenges in Syria, connecting the issue to a broader “forgotten crisis” of global population displacement.

In this keynote speech delivered January 25, 2018 at a conference on Atrocity Crimes at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC, Nicholas Burns called on President Trump, who has not championed vocally human rights and democracy so far in his Presidency, to appoint an American Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes and to take the baton of Leadership from his Republican and Democratic predecessors on this vital issue.

Professor Nicholas Burns, quoted in a New York Times article titled “Some U.S. Diplomats Stage Quiet Revolt Amid Tensions With Trump,” describes the uncomfortable position that top US diplomats find themselves in as tensions between the State Department and the White House run high

It was just one year ago that then-President Obama, seeking a modus vivendi with Tehran, said that America’s Gulf allies need to “share the Middle East” with the Iranians. That view of the Middle East was decisively repudiated this week, with Trump clearly aligning the United States with the majority of the Sunni Arab world, and Israel, against Iran.

In an interview with Amin Arefi of French magazine Le Point, Ambassador (ret.) Nicholas Burns reflects on the first ten days of the Trump administration and the trajectory of American foreign policy going forward. Burns explains the fundamental differences between Donald Trump and George W. Bush, and the  worrying implications of Trump's indifference towards the US-backed system of alliances that has upheld the liberal world order for the past seven decades.   

Free media is a key instrument of social autonomy - which can be destroyed. Unfortunately, this mechanism seems to be deteriorating in many of those countries with which Germany maintains close relations. How can the freedom of words and images be defended? Is press freedom without democracy possible - and differently? On the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the magazine Der Spiegel, the director of the foreign bureau Britta Sandberg and editor-in-chief Klaus Brinkbäumer discussed with the journalists Galina Timchenko from Russia, and Can Dündar from Turkey, and Harvard Future of Diplomacy Project Executive Director Cathryn Clüver from the USA in the KörberForum. A conclusion: "The solution to the international problem of threatened press freedom is called solidarity" (Can Dündar). 

In German, Russian, and Turkish with German subtitles.