Diplomacy and International Politics

A long-awaited US probe on Russian election meddling has divided Washington but on one point virtually all US policymakers are clear -- there will be no reconciliation with Moscow.

With little public fanfare, U.S. Cyber Command, the military’s new center for combating electronic attacks against the United States, has launched operations to deter and disrupt Russians who have been interfering with the U.S. political system.

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.

Three questions for four participants of the Richard C. Holbrooke Forum’s “Digital Diplomacy Project: Power, Innovation and Order in a Networked World,” which was held in Tallinn, Estonia, from November 5-7, 2017.

Former ambassador Nicholas Burns, Harvard Kennedy School professor, predicts a 'fractured' Iraq for the next five or ten years.

Nicholas Burns talks with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell about claims by a Russian oligarch jailed by President Putin that Putin is paranoid and the future of Russia's leader. 

Nick Burns talks with Andrea Mitchell about additional revelations about Russia's use of social media (Twitter, Facebook) to influence outcome of 2016 U.S. Presidential election. 

"Legally, the KRG continues to operate as a federal unit of the Iraqi national government, but a September 25 referendum for independence could set the Kurds on a trajectory toward sovereignty, something Iraqi Kurds overwhelmingly wanted in an unofficial referendum held in 2005. Both the upcoming referendum and issues of territorial control are already being hotly contested. Peshmerga views of the post-ISIS regional order—and the extent to which these views are unified—are therefore key to Iraq’s political future."

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.