Diplomacy and International Politics

It was just one year ago that then-President Obama, seeking a modus vivendi with Tehran, said that America’s Gulf allies need to “share the Middle East” with the Iranians. That view of the Middle East was decisively repudiated this week, with Trump clearly aligning the United States with the majority of the Sunni Arab world, and Israel, against Iran.

Professors Nicholas Burns of Harvard Kennedy School, James Sebenius of Harvard Business School, and Robert Mnookin of Harvard Law School traveled to Stanford University in February to interview former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about diplomacy and her most consequential negotiations while in office. The interview with Secretary Rice, now a professor at Stanford, was the latest in a series of recorded discussions with former secretaries of state by the three faculty directors of The American Secretaries of State Project (SOSP). Rice discussed major negotiations with which she was involved during President George W. Bush’s administration and shared lessons she has learned about diplomacy.

“I know Vladimir Putin well,” General Colin Powell said during a recent appearance at Harvard University. “He’s KGB through and through.” Powell, a former secretary of state, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and national security advisor, was on campus on October 30 to participate in Harvard’s American Secretaries of State Project."

The Summer 2015 issue of the Middle East Initiative Mosaic newsletter features highlights of MEI programs and activities over the 2014-2015 academic year, along with research and analysis of critical global issues by members of our community. This issue includes Crisis of the Arab State, a report by spring 2015 Kuwait Foundation Visiting Scholar Michael C. Hudson's study group, a review of a selection of the 66 events MEI hosted, interviews with students and faculty, and more.

More than 40 Harvard students traveled to the Middle East over the winter break to assess–firsthand–the rehabilitation needs of Syrian refugees in Jordan and alternative energy and environmental challenges and opportunities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Belfer Center’s Middle East Initiative supported the field visits.

During Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s September visit to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly, he met with a select group of scholars and journalists that included several Iranian/nuclear experts from the Belfer Center. Graham Allison, Gary Samore, Olli Heinonen, David Sanger, and David Ignatius offered their takeaways following Rouhani's visit.

Rami G. Khouri, a veteran Middle East journalist and scholar, captured the intense drama of the nearly three-year-old Arab Spring with one statistic: while many recall the self-immolation by Tunisian activist Mohamed Bouazizi on Dec. 17, 2010, as the spark for the uprisings, Khouri noted that no fewer than 65 Arabs set themselves ablaze in the months following Bouazizi’s act to draw attention to grievances across the region.

As part of its mission to encourage deeper engagement with the people and cultures of the Middle East, the Belfer Center’s Middle East Initiative (MEI) is offering a rich series of seminars that examine the complex transitions taking place, particularly in relation to politics and economics and the humanitarian crisis in Syria and surrounding countries.

As threats from North Korea intensified this spring, Korean Peninsula experts from the Belfer Center provided insight and analysis.