Diplomacy and International Politics

Vladimir Putin took a step closer to president-for-life status this week in Russia, winning a fourth term as president with more than 76 percent of the vote and not a single meaningful challenger against him. Today, President Donald Trump — whose campaign is still being investigated for potential collusion with Russia — said he called Putin to congratulate him and plan for a meeting in the “not-too-distant future.” In the room during that phone call was Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who has been accused of war crimes in Yemen. Former U.S. ambassador to NATO, Nicholas Burns, also a former undersecretary of state, joined Jim Braude to discuss.

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.

Nick Burns, Harvard Kennedy School professor & former under secretary of State for political affairs, and Sarah Stern, Endowment for Middle East Truth president, discuss President Trump's decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital. Nicholas Burns, who served as U.S. ambassador to NATO and was the State Department's third-ranking official during George W. Bush's presidency, called the decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital "deeply unwise."

Former ambassador Nicholas Burns, Harvard Kennedy School professor, predicts a 'fractured' Iraq for the next five or ten years.

"Legally, the KRG continues to operate as a federal unit of the Iraqi national government, but a September 25 referendum for independence could set the Kurds on a trajectory toward sovereignty, something Iraqi Kurds overwhelmingly wanted in an unofficial referendum held in 2005. Both the upcoming referendum and issues of territorial control are already being hotly contested. Peshmerga views of the post-ISIS regional order—and the extent to which these views are unified—are therefore key to Iraq’s political future."

President Trump promised voters that he would strike “a great deal” with Russia and its autocratic president, Vladimir Putin. Now nearly six months into his presidency, Trump is set to finally meet Putin at a summit this week in Hamburg — severely constrained and facing few good options that would leave him politically unscathed.

Professor Nicholas Burns and Future of Diplomacy Project Senior Fellow, David Ignatius, in conversation with Charlie Rose about the Trump administration on the national security stage.

In this installation of Conversations in Diplomacy, Congressman Seth Moulton, Representative of the Sixth District of Massachusetts, military veteran, and graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School, discusses the most serious threats to U.S. national security with Ambassador Nicholas Burns, Faculty Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project.

Ambassador João Vale de Almeida, European Union Ambassador to the United Nations, spoke at the Kennedy School as part of the Future of Diplomacy Project’s annual ‘Europe Week’ series.

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.