Diplomacy and International Politics

Ambassador Nicholas Burns speaks about the "devastating portrait" of President Trump's leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The American economy is in an artificial coma, unemployment is soaring, and estimates of corona deaths in the U.S. are appalling. The President is currently speaking to the press almost daily about the situation. In the podcast, Tyson Barker, Deputy Director and Fellow at Aspen Institute Germany, and David Deissner, Managing Director of Atlantik-Brücke, speak with Peter Rough, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, and Cathryn Clüver, Executive Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project and Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship, Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center, on the President's crisis management, the role of states in managing the pandemic, and more.

The world has never before confronted a crisis quite like COVID-19, one that has simultaneously tested both the limits of public health systems everywhere and the ability of countries to work together on a shared challenge. But it is in just such moments of crisis that, under all prior U.S. presidents since World War II, the institutions of U.S. foreign policy mobilize for leadership. They call nations to action. 

The pandemic will change the world forever. We asked 12 leading global thinkers for their predictions.

Since Watergate, presidents and their aides have warned that impeachment is destabilizing to foreign policy. But history suggests otherwise. Presidential scandals create uncertainty abroad, but the impeachment process itself seems to bring clarity and resolution.

President Trump is pushing Boris Johnson, the incoming prime minister of Britain, toward a hard break with the European Union. But Mr. Johnson could be constrained.

Ambassador Nick Burns discusses the latest developments on the Iran front and how the Trump administration should respond

President Trump’s unconventional foreign policy appeared in disarray amid a series of setbacks around the globe and mounting signs that the president and his advisors were on the verge of losing several risky policy bets.