Diplomacy and International Politics

On March 31,  the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship and the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies hosted a discussion with Wolfgang Ischinger, former Chairman of the Munich Security Conference, Joseph S. Nye Jr., Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, and Daniela Schwarzer, Executive Director for Europe and Eurasia at the Open Society Foundations, on how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as well as the brutality of its action has caused an unexpected reversal of Germany’s long time security policy and led to strong reactions in the rest of Europe, NATO, and the posture of the Biden administration. The seminar examined the dimensions and consequences of these developments for the future of the EU and the West. Karl Kaiser, Senior Fellow at the Project on Europe, moderated.

On November 17, Ambassadors Nicholas Burns, Marc Grossman, and Marcie Ries officially launched their report, “A U.S. Diplomatic Service for the 21st Century,”published as part of the American Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.  These distinguished career Foreign Service Officers, and report co-authors, shared their recommendations on how to rebuild, reform, and reimagine the U.S. Foreign Service so that America can have the strongest and most effective diplomatic service to defend our country and advance its interests. 

On November 12, 2020, the Future of Diplomacy Project hosted a discussion with Dame Karen Pierce, Ambassador of the United Kingdom to the United States about the major foreign policy challenges facing the UK and the US after the 2020 election, including climate, free trade and international leadership in a seminar moderated by Faculty Chair, Nicholas Burns.

Europeans awoke on Thursday morning to news that President Donald Trump had announced the suspension of “all travel from Europe to the United States.” Blaming the European Union (EU) for failing “to take the same precautions and restrict travel from China,” Trump suggested “a large number of new [coronavirus] clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe.”

NATO is neither “brain dead” nor in crisis.  Rather, the alliance is at a turning point much like others it has faced before in its seventy-year history.  Change is central to the story of how NATO has endured. 

How should the US and Australia plan for a future of both strategic competition and cooperation with China? How do we get the balance between them right? The distinguished American diplomat Nicholas Burns, the Lowy Institute’s 2019 Rothschild & Co Distinguished International Fellow, addressed these questions in the 2019 Owen Harries Lecture.

I saw first-hand the value of our alliance with Europe on 9/11 when I was the new American Ambassador to the Alliance.  When we were hit hard in New York and Washington D.C., the allied Ambassadors came to me in Brussels that afternoon to pledge their support for us when we needed them most.  They pledged to invoke the alliance’s collective defense clause—Article 5 of the NATO Treaty—that an attack on one would be considered an attack on all.