Articles

A interview conducted by The Fletcher School Forum with Ambassador Nicholas Burns, Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

During the Trump administration, the usual ways of conducting diplomacy have been upended. Many positions in the State Department have never been filled, and meetings with foreign leaders such as Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin have been undertaken with little advance planning. What effect are these changes having now, and how will they affect ongoing relationships between the United States and its allies and adversaries?

With no ambassador, few experts at State, and a team of West Wing advisers who only know “ ‘shoot’ or ‘don’t shoot,’ ” can Trump really change the game with North Korea?

In this book review, Nicholas Burns writes that “Gorbachev: His Life and Times” by William Taubman is "a fascinating, perceptive, and compelling account of the life of a brilliant, driven, but flawed leader who remains to this day, in the Amherst College professor’s eyes, a 'tragic hero.'" 

Professor Nicholas Burns, quoted in a New York Times article titled “Some U.S. Diplomats Stage Quiet Revolt Amid Tensions With Trump,” describes the uncomfortable position that top US diplomats find themselves in as tensions between the State Department and the White House run high

In an interview with Amin Arefi of French magazine Le Point, Ambassador (ret.) Nicholas Burns reflects on the first ten days of the Trump administration and the trajectory of American foreign policy going forward. Burns explains the fundamental differences between Donald Trump and George W. Bush, and the  worrying implications of Trump's indifference towards the US-backed system of alliances that has upheld the liberal world order for the past seven decades.   

The fall of Aleppo is a human catastrophe. It’s also a demonstration of the perils of choosing the middle course in a military conflict. Sometimes it’s possible to talk and fight at the same time. But in Syria, the U.S. decision to pursue a dual-track, halfway approach made the mayhem worse.

On Thursday, voters in the U.K. will decide by a simple majority whether to remain in the E.U. during a national referendum known as “Brexit” (a portmanteau of the words British and exit). Over the last month, public opinion polling showed voters evenly split, with the “leave” campaign edging upslightly in recent days. Douglas Alexander is a senior fellow in The Future of Diplomacy Project.The Gazette spoke with Alexander about the upcoming referendum and the potential fallout for the U.K. and Europe.

In this interview with the Harvard Gazette, Nicholas Burns and Juliette Kayyem offer their respective views on the immediate lessons to be drawn from the brutal terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13.

Professor Burns says that this attack demonstrates clearly that the Islamic State has the reach and capacity to carry out complex, lethal terrorist operations well beyond its own region. In response, the U.S. and its Arab, Turkish and European partners must shift from seeking to contain ISIS to defeating it. That will require stronger and more assertive U.S. leadership than we have seen to date.  While the U.S. should not commit ground combat troops to this effort, we are the only country that has the influence and capacity to lead a broad international coalition to defeat ISIS at its base in northern Syria as well as in Iraq.

Professor Burns suggests how we might start to build such a coalition in this interview.

American Secretaries of State Project honoree Henry A. Kissinger looks back on George C. Marshall's groundbreaking 1947 Harvard Commencement speech and its enduring importance for American foreign policy.