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.

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.

Amb. Nicholas Burns challenged Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on the 2016 election meddling at the Munich Security Conference and Kislyak refused to answer. Amb. Burns, Dr. Evelyn Farkas, and David Ignatius discuss that interaction and its significance.

In this installment of “Conversations in Diplomacy," the Future of Diplomacy Project's Faculty Director, Nicholas Burns, is joined by Angus King Jr, Independent Senator from Maine.

Ambassador Nicholas Burns discusses Russia, NATO, and Trump with MSNBC.

Ambassador Burns says it was "unwise" for Trump to question Russian meddling during a joint news conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda in Poland on Thursday. Burns states that in doing so, Trump was "out of step with his own political party" and failed to defend the United States.

President Trump promised voters that he would strike “a great deal” with Russia and its autocratic president, Vladimir Putin. Now nearly six months into his presidency, Trump is set to finally meet Putin at a summit this week in Hamburg — severely constrained and facing few good options that would leave him politically unscathed.

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. 

Nicholas Burns provided video commentary on CNN Newsroom on January 8, 2017 on the subject of the alleged Russian hacking of the U.S. presidential election.