Diplomacy and International Politics

Launch of the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship at the Belfer Center.

With panelists: Pedro Morenés Ambassador of Spain to the United States David O’Sullivan Ambassador of the European Union to the United States; Julianne Smith Senior Fellow and Director of the Transatlantic Security Program, Center for a New American Security; and Peter Wittig, Ambassador of Germany to the United States.

Moderated by: Nicholas Burns, Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations, and Faculty Chair of the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship and the Future of Diplomacy Project.

Opening Remarks by: Douglas Elmendorf, Dean and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Free media is a key instrument of social autonomy - which can be destroyed. Unfortunately, this mechanism seems to be deteriorating in many of those countries with which Germany maintains close relations. How can the freedom of words and images be defended? Is press freedom without democracy possible - and differently? On the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the magazine Der Spiegel, the director of the foreign bureau Britta Sandberg and editor-in-chief Klaus Brinkbäumer discussed with the journalists Galina Timchenko from Russia, and Can Dündar from Turkey, and Harvard Future of Diplomacy Project Executive Director Cathryn Clüver from the USA in the KörberForum. A conclusion: "The solution to the international problem of threatened press freedom is called solidarity" (Can Dündar). 

In German, Russian, and Turkish with German subtitles. 

Jens Stoltenberg,NATO Secretary General, discussed the future of the NATO alliance during this speech, given at the Harvard Kennedy School on September 23, 2016. He described the alliance as a responsive organization, capable of adapting to changes in the international security landscape but committed to the continuity of its founding values. In particular, he emphasized the necessity of maintaining a policy of absolute solidarity among member states, especially  in light of the exacerbating civil war in Syria and Russia’s aggressive stance toward countries to the East of NATO member state borders.