Middle East & North Africa

This year’s Halifax International Security Forum paid respect to the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One, but in its final plenary session, Future Tense: Our World in Ten, the attention shifted to the future. How will the issues discussed throughout this year’s Forum play out over the next decade? Will democratic states be able to defend their values and institutions from growing threats like great power politics and cyber-warfare? This diverse set of panelists spoke confidently and optimistically about the resilience of democracies to withstand this challenge.

The U.S. is "a long way" from taking any "punitive action" against Saudi Arabia over the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi any time soon, a former ambassador said Monday.

"For President Trump, it is a difficult balancing act," Nicholas Burns, who served under Republican and Democratic administrations as ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Greece, said on CNBC's "Squawk Alley."

"He doesn't want to end the relationship with Saudi Arabia," he added. "But on the other hand, you have American values to uphold."

Prominent journalist and critic of the Saudi government, Jamal Khashoggi, walked into the country’s consulate in Istanbul last week to obtain some documents and has not been seen since. The authorities in Istanbul believe he was murdered by Saudi agents. Saudi Arabia insists that he left the consulate shortly after he arrived. Former diplomat and US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Nicholas Burns, told BBC Hardtalk's Stephen Sackur that because Mr Khashoggi was a permanent resident of the United States there was a direct interest of the US government to pressure the Saudi government to “tell the truth of what happened.”

Nicholas Burns' interview op-ed with NowThis news: Trump is only making Iran stronger.

Cathryn Cluver Ashbrook, Executive Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project, discusses the importance of the final wording of the G-20 communique, particularly with respect to the climate change and energy policy dossiers, noting different approaches to achieve transatlantic compromise. She underlines the importance of high-level meetings such as the G-20 to address critical global challenges, including multilateral responses to North Korea’s provocations and the ongoing conflict in Syria.

For the first time during the Syrian civil war, the US has shot down a Syrian aircraft. In response, Russia has threatened to target any aircraft, including US aircraft, that fly west of the Euphrates River.

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. 

In a Harvard Kennedy School IDEASpHERE session titled "Challenges to US Global Leadership," Graham Allison, Nicholas Burns, David Gergen, David Ignatius, and Meghan O’Sullivan discussed challenges as well as opportunities facing the United States. Burns moderated the session.

Challenges include the rise of China and the future of the U.S.-China relationship, the crises taking place around the world, and the reputation of the U.S. worldwide. An unexpected opportunity is the increase in available energy sources in the United States.

By Vilas Rao, Research Assistant, India and South Asia Program

The Indian Ocean will become a critical area of influence over the next century, according to journalist and author Robert Kaplan, reflecting on the findings of his new book Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power.