Middle East & North Africa

In this installment of “Conversations in Diplomacy," the Future of Diplomacy Project's Faculty Director Nicholas Burns is joined by Sir John Sawers, the former Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, for a conversation on tackling global security challenges in the digital age and the changing nature of intelligence agencies.

Nicholas Burns says Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, who met with Trump campaign, is 'no friend of the US' and calls Trump is 'weak on Russia.'

Tawakkol Karman, Yemeni activist and recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, served as a Fisher Family Fellow with Harvard’s Future of Diplomacy Project. An outspoken and passionate advocate for human rights, she was critical of the inaction of international institutions and developed nations in response to rights violations in the Middle East.

In the global revulsion at the recent terror attacks in four Muslim countries, the United States and its allies have a new opportunity to build a unified command against the Islamic State and other extremists. FDP Senior Fellow David Ignatius examines the diplomatic relationships needed to create an effective counterterrorism strategy.

The tensions unsettling the Saudi royal family became clear in September, when Joseph Westphal, the U.S. ambassador to Riyadh, flew to Jiddah to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, nominally the heir to the throne. But when he arrived, he was told that the deputy crown prince, a brash 30-year-old named Mohammed bin Salman, wanted to see him urgently. Senior Fellow, David Ignatius, discusses Mohammed bin Salman opportunity to transform Saudi Arabia.

Trump's polarizing rhetoric on this issue may be the best thing the Islamic State has going for it, according to some leading U.S. and foreign counterterrorism experts. The group's self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq is imploding. Its Syrian capital of Raqqah is surrounded and besieged; the gap in the Turkish-Syrian border that allowed the free flow of foreign fighters is finally being closed; Sunni tribal sheikhs who until recently had cooperated with the Islamic State are switching sides. The group's narrative is collapsing -- with one exception. David Ignatius, Senior Fellow at the Future of Diplomacy Project examines how the Presidential candidate is already effecting US foreign policy.

Republican and Democratic presidential candidates should be able to agree on one stark foreign policy reality: The tide hasn’t turned in the war against the Islamic State. In the 18 months that the United States has been working to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the group, it has grown to become a global force that can strike targets in Europe, Asia, Africa and America.

There’s a scary disconnect between the somber warnings you hear privately from military leaders about the war against the Islamic State and the glib debating points coming from Republican and Democratic politicians.

Russia is emerging as an essential diplomatic and security partner for the United States in Syria, despite the Obama administration’s opposition to Moscow’s support for President Bashar al-Assad.

IT’S NEARLY unfathomable that two San Bernardino parents could nonchalantly drop off their six-month-old baby and embark on a shooting spree, murdering 14 people in the name of a terrorist organization. Yet theirs is hardly an isolated impulse. According to FBI Director James Comey, there are currently 300 American-based sympathizers online. The FBI is pursuing 900 active cases in all 50 states, and 71 individuals have been arrested on terrorism-related charges this year alone. As facts like these make clear, American youth are not immune to extremist ideology, and we should be doing far more to protect them.