Diplomacy and International Politics

This battle between past and future is the hidden drama within the gargantuan $750 billion fiscal 2020 defense budget proposal. Nearly everyone favors high-tech weapons to combat great-power adversaries in the new millennium, in principle. But meanwhile, the military-industrial-congressional complex, as John McCain termed it, keeps pumping vast sums to sustain legacy weapons systems.

Ambassador Doug Lute testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on March 13, 2019 about the indispensable role of NATO, the U.S.'s  greatest geo-strategic advantage over any potential competitors.  

Trump administration claims of progress in talks with the Taliban have sparked fears even among the president's allies that his impatience with the war in Afghanistan will lead him to withdraw troops too soon, leaving the country at risk of returning to the same volatile condition that prompted the invasion in the first place.

According to Nicholas Burns, a former U.S. ambassador who served Bill Clinton and in both Bush administrations, Trump’s approach in Syria has more in common with Obama’s than either would likely admit. “I think that the president’s tweet yesterday was specific enough that he has effectively drawn a red line as well. I think that the president needs to respond to this.”

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

Nicholas Burns's April 7 op-ed in the weekend edition of the Financial Times on the U.S. cruise missile strikes against the Syrian Air Force. His major points are:

• He supports President Trump's decision. The U.S. should not tolerate Asad's use of chemical weapons against Syrian civilians.
   
• The Trump Administration needs a strategy for what comes next. They may consider working with Turkey to establish safe havens for civilians protected by a No Flight Zone. This carries enormous risk. Tread carefully.
   
• The U.S. should push hard to resume UN-sponsored negotiations for a cease-fire and an eventual settlement to end the war. It may take years. But this is how the war will end.
   
• Trump should reverse course and admit Syrian refugees into the U.S. This is the most direct way to help in the most horrific refugee crisis since World War Two.
   
• Finally, this often brash and impulsive President should not conclude that the Syria strikes can be replicated easily elsewhere, such as in North Korea.  

On Thursday, President Trump ordered a military strike on "the airfield in Syria where the chemical weapons attack was launched." He said that "it is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons." It was the first direct American assault on President Bashar al-Assad's regime since the Syrian civil war began six years ago.

Nicholas Burns talks with WBUR/Radio Boston.