Asia & the Pacific

While personality has often played a role in high-stakes diplomatic negotiations in the past—for better or worse—experts say successful negotiations depend just as much on professionals who carefully prepare the groundwork. 

While veteran diplomat Nick Burns calls the president's order an 'overreach,' Republican consultant Scott Jennings says he's making strides internationally.

In the wake to the highly anticipated encounter between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore, the Center for International Security and Governance hosted a lecture and panel discussion with Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, Executive Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School, on June 14^th 2018. Dr. Enrico Fels, who was also scheduled to participate in the panel discussion, regrettably had to cancel his participation last minute due to personal reasons.

Fmr. U.S. Amb. to NATO Nicholas Burns on Russian diplomats expelled from U.S. and European countries. 

Nicholas Burns, Professor at Harvard Kennedy School and former US Under Secretary of State, looks at what lies ahead for global politics as well as current geopolitical risks. “The world is experiencing the most profound leadership transition in a generation,” states Burns, who adds that 2018 promises to be a year of significant challenge to global stability and peace.  


Chinese analysts, from President Xi Jinping on down, have nominally rejected Allison’s pessimistic analysis. “There is no Thucydides Trap,” Xi has argued, claiming that he had devised an alternative “new type of great-power relations” that would avoid war by recognizing that each Asian giant had its own legitimate interests. More recently, he has shifted to arguing that “China and the U.S. must do everything possible to avoid [the] Thucydides Trap.”