Diplomacy and International Politics

Nicholas Burns, former American diplomat and current professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, joined Chad to react to the current situation in Syria and his thoughts on how the United States need to handle it.

Robert Danin, a senior fellow with the Future Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center, comments on the Syria gas attack and the Trump administration's response. 

"The total potential annual costs of climate change direct damage impacts under the highest emissions scenario, the report says, would reach $2.8 billion a year by 2040 and a staggering $23 billion a year by 2080. The total cumulative costs of direct damage impacts and forgone economic growth potential would reach figures that are almost incomprehensible for a small state like Lebanon: $139 billion by 2080..."

"The sudden eruption of the mass protests during the past two weeks was triggered by the garbage problem, which itself captured the deeper weaknesses of the political system that finally caused deep and daily pain in the lives of every citizen — and citizens recognized that the problem was in the nature of the moribund governance system that was manned by their sectarian leaders. So Lebanon now faces a direct confrontation between these two strong forces: on the one hand, an angry, embittered citizenry that cannot long endure the discomfort of lack of essential services and the indignity of the apparent uncaring attitude of the government, and, on the other, a powerful political elite that will fight back to protect its privileges."

"The worsening situation in Syria threatens the Middle East in many ways that will continue to evolve in the months and years ahead, but perhaps the most troubling threat is the continued expansion of the hardline groups of Salafist-takfiri Islamists, such as Al-Nusra Front and The Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), that have established themselves in parts of Syria."

Professor Burns discusses the shift in policy and tone coming from Iran, courtesy of its new president, Hassan Rouhani, and what that means for future relations between the U.S. and Iran.

Professor Burns discusses this week's extraordinary events surrounding the chaos in Syria and the Russian offer to broker a diplomatic end to the crisis.

The US can no longer afford to stay on the sidelines in Syria, writes Professor Burns in this week's GlobalPost piece.  The stakes and consequences are just too high to do otherwise.

"Reports from inside two Syrian chemical weapons facilities offer chilling new evidence that President Bashar al-Assad’s regime developed special vehicles last year for moving and mixing the weapons — and an unconfirmed allegation that Lebanese allies of the regime, presumably in Hezbollah, may have been trained 11 months ago in the weapons’ use," writes Future of Diplomacy Project senior fellow David Ignatius.