Diplomacy and International Politics

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.

The presidency of Donald Trump is challenging nothing less than the foundation of American democracy, says R. Nicholas Burns, a former U.S. ambassador and undersecretary of state for President George W. Bush. “That generation between 1945 and the last couple years produced, despite all the problems we have, a stable world,” said Burns. “And I am now worried.”

Professor Nicholas Burns, a former point man on Iranian nuclear matters, talks with The Wall Street Journal's Washington Bureau Chief, Gerald Seib, about why he advocates effort to contain Tehran’s regional ambitions.

Following 18 months of secret talks facilitated by Pope Francis and the Canadian government, President Barack Obama announced Wednesday that the United States and Cuba will re-establish diplomatic and economic relations, ending a political stalemate that began more than half a century ago.

Under the agreement, the United States will open an embassy in Havana; many existing travel, trade, and banking restrictions imposed on American citizens and businesses will be loosened; and Secretary of State John Kerry will review Cuba’s presence on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Additionally, Obama said, two American prisoners in Cuba, contractor Alan Gross and an unidentified U.S. intelligence officer, were released in exchange for three Cuban spies who had been jailed in the United States since 2001.

In separate phone and email exchanges, the Gazette turned to two Harvard authorities on Cuba and American foreign policy to interpret the importance of the U.S. policy shift with the island nation, one of the last bastions of communist rule in the world, and where the agreement likely will lead, both economically and politically. The changes also have implications for Harvard.

Nicholas Burns is the Sultan of Oman Professor of the Practice of International Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). A former U.S. ambassador to NATO and Greece and a career Foreign Service officer, Burns is also director of the Future of Diplomacy Project at HKS. Here are their insights.

Jorge Domínguez is co-chair of Harvard’s Cuban Studies Program, focusing on Cuba’s domestic and international politics and economics. He is also vice provost of international affairs at Harvard and the Antonio Madero Professor for the Study of Mexico at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

These interviews were lightly edited for length and clarity.

Iran and six world powers clinched a deal on Sunday curbing the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for initial sanctions relief. Sounds pretty good, but of course nothing is that simple and already Israel has called it a "historic mistake." Which is it? And what's going to happen next? Harvard Kennedy School professor and GlobalPost senior foreign affairs columnist, Nicholas Burns, weighs in.

Read about the Harvard Kennedy School’s JFK Jr. Forum event that drew more than 700 people on Wednesday night to listen to an expert panel discuss Syria. The panel of Graham Allison, Joseph Nye, Nicholas Burns, Marisa Porges, and Niall Ferguson, debated on whether or not the U.S. should intervene militarily in Syria. At the end of the Forum, the audience was polled for their take, with 55 percent voting against military action.

As Congress was considering whether the United States should take military action in Syria against the regime of President Bashar Assad for allegedly using chemical weapons against civilians, Gazette staff writer Christina Pazzanese spoke with R. Nicholas Burns, the Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School, about the unsettled situation and the military, political, and humanitarian actions that the United States and some allies might undertake in a Mideast nation torn by civil war.

Today's violence and chaos in Cairo is a stark reminder of the complexities of political revolution in one of the most important countries in the Middle East, to say nothing of the tricky international diplomacy that surrounds it. On August 14, GlobalPost interviewed Professor Nicholas Burns about events in Egypt.