Middle East & North Africa

14 Items

Nicholas Burns speaks at Bates College on March 29

Theophil Syslo/Bates College

News - Bates College

Former NATO Ambassador: Global Leadership is More Important Than Ever

| Mar. 30, 2018

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.

Nicholas Burns on Bloomberg's "What'd You Miss?"

Bloomberg.com

Analysis & Opinions - Bloomberg

Nicholas Burns discusses President Trump meeting with Erdogan

| May 16, 2017

Nicholas Burns, a Harvard Kennedy School professor, discusses President Donald Trump's meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the fallout from his intelligence disclosures to Russian diplomats. He speaks with Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal, Julia Chatterley and Scarlet Fu on "What'd You Miss?" 

Obama’s daunting new year

AP

Analysis & Opinions - The Boston Globe

Obama’s daunting new year

| January 1, 2015

The United States is facing a daunting array of foreign policy challenges in the year ahead.   Professor Burns writes that President Obama should try to contain North Korea; complete the two major trade deals with Asian partners and the European Union; continue to pursue a nuclear agreement with Iran; move toward further sanctions against Putin; step up to a more assertive U.S. role in Syria; push for a global climate pact and work to rebuild U.S. international credibility after damaging revelations on torture and worrying domestic racial tensions.

2015 may well be the most consequential year for the President's foreign policy legacy.  While this is an extraordinarily difficult agenda, he still commands the world's strongest military and diplomatic corps and a strengthening American economy.  He has an opportunity this year to move forward on a broad front to strengthen America's global leadership role.

Analysis & Opinions - Financial Times

Three critical tests for NATO leaders in Wales

| August 31, 2014

This week's NATO Summit meeting in Wales will be among the most consequential in the Alliance's 65-year history. President Obama and Europe's leaders will contend with three major challenges.

First, they should agree on stronger sanctions against Russia following the move of Russian troops across the border into Ukraine during the last week. They should also agree to provide military equipment to the embattled Ukrainian government so that it can defend its country. Second, the European allies should agree to help the U.S. contain ISIS in Iraq and Syria. And, third, NATO should reconsider its decision to remove all combat forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2016. That will give the Taliban an open road to destabilize the new Afghan government.

These crises pose major challenges to this generation of NATO leaders. NATO will need strong American leadership, in particular, if it is to succeed in maintaining its status as the world's most powerful and effective alliance.

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, right, and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze smile at the beginning of talks with the Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, at the Kremlin in Moscow on Tuesday, Nov. 26, 1991.

AP

Analysis & Opinions - The Boston Globe

A Cold War lesson for Iran

| July 17, 2014

In tribute to former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze who died last week, Nicholas Burns reflects on the admirable and successful diplomacy by veteran diplomats of former rivals -- the U.S. and U.S.S.R. -- to bring a peaceful end to the Cold War. From this seemingly unlikely and remarkable outcome, he draws lessons on how we might proceed on another Cold War — our 35-year struggle with Iran, now at a critical juncture.

A Syrian refugee stands in front of her family's makeshift home at Zaatari Refugee Camp near the Syrian border, in Mafraq, Jordan, Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2014.

AP Photo/Mohammad Hannon

Analysis & Opinions - The Boston Globe

A Srebrenica moment in Syria?

| February 13, 2014

As the world's attention is largely on Sochi, mass killings and exodus continue in Syria and negotiations barely make it to the table in Geneva. In this piece, Nicholas Burns wonders when the United States and other global powers will have their "Srebrenica moment," when they can no longer stand on the sidelines and resolve instead that they finally have to act. For the sake of the 9.3 million Syrian refugees and the millions still suffering in country, he hopes its soon.