Diplomacy and International Politics

New sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council on September 11 in response to North Korea’s latest nuclear test are “not significant enough,” according to R. Nicholas Burns, an Atlantic Council board member who served as undersecretary of state for political affairs in the George W. Bush administration.

Sanctions must be part of a “patient long-term strategy” that includes deterrence, working closely with allies, and negotiations, said Burns, laying out the United States’ options for dealing with the North Korean crisis.  

It was just one year ago that then-President Obama, seeking a modus vivendi with Tehran, said that America’s Gulf allies need to “share the Middle East” with the Iranians. That view of the Middle East was decisively repudiated this week, with Trump clearly aligning the United States with the majority of the Sunni Arab world, and Israel, against Iran.

With the successful implementation of the historic nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1, a new chapter has opened between Iran and the international community, including the United States. Nevertheless, the future path of bilateral relations between the United States and Iran is uncertain and many challenges exist as the two countries attempt to formulate new terms of engagement. What should U.S. policy be towards Iran after the nuclear agreement? Can the agree­ment open the door to effective collaboration on areas of mutual interest, especially given the rising security challenges and rapidly changing dynamics of the Middle East? Or, will strategic rivalries between Iran and the United States con­tinue to shape and impede cooperation?

In this issue, the Belfer Center is pleased to feature the contributions of Hedi Larbi, the 2015–2016 Kuwait Foundation Visiting Scholar at the Middle East Initiative. During his stay, Larbi led a dynamic study group of students, fellows, and faculty in examining social contracts. In 2014–2015, he served as Minister of Economic Infrastructure and Sustainable Development and as Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister of Tunisia.

Inspired by her Lebanese heritage and childhood visits to family in Lebanon during a tense occupation period in the 1980s and 90s, Amanda Rizkallah has devoted her dissertation research to unravelling the complications of a post-war Lebanon.

The American Secretaries of State Project, directed by Eugene B. Kogan, a former Stanton Postdoctoral Fellow at the Belfer Center, will interview former U.S. secretaries of state about the most demanding and consequential negotiations they conducted while in the nation’s highest foreign policy office. Along with Albright, Secretaries George P. Shultz, James A. Baker III, and Henry A. Kissinger have shared their experiences. Secretaries Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Hillary Rodham Clinton have agreed to be part of this historic undertaking in the near future.

Leaders in government, diplomacy, and the non-profit world have been selected by the Belfer Center’s Future of Diplomacy Project for the prestigious 2012 Fisher Family Fellowships.

On the heels of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' application to the UN for full Palestinian statehood, the Belfer Center asked a number of its resident experts and scholars what their reactions were to the historic move.

The Summer 2011 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features analysis and advice by Belfer Center scholars regarding the historic upheavals in the Middle East and the disastrous consequences of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The Center’s new Geopolitics of Energy project is also highlighted, along with efforts by the Project on Managing the Atom to strengthen nuclear export rules.