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The essence of global politics today, said career diplomat and Harvard professor Nicholas Burns in a speech at Bates College, is that no country can go it alone.

Issues like climate change, public health crises, the threat of chemical and nuclear weapons, and cyber attacks are transnational problems requiring transnational solutions. But while a global mindset is more necessary than ever, the United States’ highest leaders are drawing back from the world.

“We’re led by the first president since the 1920s who doesn’t believe that the United States has a fundamental responsibility to help the world be knit together, to be the first responders, to cope with the big problems and the small problems,” Burns said to a Bates audience on March 29.

The debate over Crimean independence has grown more heated as Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to insist that citizens in the majority ethnic-Russian region of Ukraine should determine their own political fate. He points to yesterday’s limited Crimean vote favoring joining Russia as evidence, and has also endorsed Crimean independence, at least in the short term. But many other world leaders disagree, arguing that Ukraine’s national sovereignty is being violated and that Putin is simply exercising a power grab.