Diplomacy and International Politics

North Korea’s nuclear weapons challenge is as serious a crisis an American president has faced since the end of the Cold War. That is why President Trump should tread carefully and wisely before hurtling us toward conflict in Asia.

Senior Fellow of the Future of Diplomacy Project, David Ignatius examines the Navy’s energy diet that began seven years ago with an edict from newly appointed Secretary Ray Mabus, who issued five goals for radically changing how the Navy bought and consumed fuel.

Our first African-American chief executive has sometimes taken wing -- and then, sadly, been brought back to earth by the real-life encumbrances of terrorism, domestic political division and his own limitations as a political leader. Fleetingly, we get a glimpse of his potential for greatness as a president. Senior Fellow for the Future of Diplomacy Project, David Ignatius, examines how President Obama has handled American tragedy and how his historical image will be sealed within these experiences.

We are into the season when you will be flooded with articles and analyses on the 100-year anniversary of the Sykes-Picot agreement that was signed on May 18, 1916. That agreement between Great Britain and France, with Russian acquiescence, defined how they would divide the spoils of the crumbling Ottoman Empire in the East Mediterranean region.

The agreement to freeze production was geopolitical not economic, writes Meghan O’Sullivan in the Financial Times.

"Regional actors will no doubt try to pass the buck and get Americans to do their fighting for them. U.S. leaders should reject such ploys politely but firmly and pass the buck right back. ISIS is not an existential threat to the United States, to Middle Eastern energy supplies, to Israel, or to any other vital U.S. interest, so U.S. military forces have no business being sent into harm's way to fight it."

"So what do we do if the Islamic State succeeds in holding on to its territory and becoming a real state? Posen says that the United States (as well as others) should deal with the Islamic State the same way it has dealt with other revolutionary state-building movements: with a policy of containment."

Seventy years ago this week, the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz death camp.  And today is the 83rd birthday of Professor Burns' wife's uncle, Bernie Rosner, who survived Auschwitz and three other Nazi camps as a young boy.  During this Holocaust Remembrance Week, Professor Burns and his wife Libby wanted to pay tribute to Bernie's courage and determination to survive the deadly trials of the Holocaust and to his courage in making a new, happy and successful life here in the United States.   His story and that of every survivor and every victim needs to be told so that Hitler's crimes in the Holocaust be remembered as the decades pass.