Diplomacy and International Politics

Foreign Affairs has recently published a number of articles on how the United States should engage with the Taliban government in Afghanistan, extremist forces within the regime, how the West can help ordinary Afghans, and the fate of the country’s women. To complement these essays, Foreign Affairs asked a broad pool of experts for their take. As with previous surveys, Foreign Affairs approached dozens of authorities with expertise relevant to the question at hand, along with leading generalists in the field. Participants were asked to state whether they agreed or disagreed with a proposition and to rate their confidence level in their opinion. Two Belfer Center experts participated, International Security Executive Editor Jacqueline L. Hazelton and Future of Diplomacy Project Senior Fellow Paula Dobriansky.

US President Donald Trump has appointed Richard Grenell, US ambassador to Germany, as acting director of national intelligence. It's a sensitive post overseeing 17 US spy agencies and has traditionally been filled by an intelligence professional. The World's Marco Werman speaks with Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook at the Harvard Kennedy School.

In an event co-hosted by the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship’s (PETR) and the Asia Center, Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, Executive Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project and the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship, moderated a panel discussion on China’s technological rise and its impact on the US-EU relationship. The panel featured Joel Brenner, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for International Studies; Danil Kerimi, Head of Technology Industries Sector, Digital Economy and Global Technology Policy, the World Economic Forum; Meicen Sun, PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Sciences at MIT; and Daniel Weitzner, Founding Director of the Internet Policy Research Initiative. 

Decades after invading Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, the US now is negotiating with them.