Diplomacy and International Politics

Fmr. Amb. Nicholas Burns joins Morning Joe to discuss the naming of John Bolton as the new national security adviser. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., also joins the conversation.

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.

Nicholas Burns, the former US Ambassador to NATO, says President Trump is in denial and he is not protecting Americans from the vast Russian conspiracy to undermine Americans elections and democracy.

Amb. Nicholas Burns challenged Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on the 2016 election meddling at the Munich Security Conference and Kislyak refused to answer. Amb. Burns, Dr. Evelyn Farkas, and David Ignatius discuss that interaction and its significance.

In this installment of “Conversations in Diplomacy," the Future of Diplomacy Project's Faculty Director, Nicholas Burns, is joined by Angus King Jr, Independent Senator from Maine.

Intelligence officers sometimes talk about “blowback,” when covert actions go bad and end up damaging the country that initiated them. A year later, that is surely the case with Russia’s secret attempt to meddle in the U.S. presidential election, which has brought a string of adverse unintended consequences for Moscow.

Ambassador Nicholas Burns discusses Russia, NATO, and Trump with MSNBC.

Ambassador Burns says it was "unwise" for Trump to question Russian meddling during a joint news conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda in Poland on Thursday. Burns states that in doing so, Trump was "out of step with his own political party" and failed to defend the United States.

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.

On June 28, Nicholas Burns testified before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee on Russian interference in European elections. He called President Trump's response to Russia's cyber attacks on the U.S. democratic system both "dismaying and objectionable." He says it's the "president's duty to be skeptical of Russia and that his refusal to take action is "a dereliction of his basic duty to defend the country."