Middle East & North Africa

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.

Nick Burns talks with CNN's Don Lemon about the UN vote on Jerusalem and Trump's 'peculiar' relationship with Putin. 

"If you want to understand the foreign policy of a great power, therefore (and probably lesser powers as well), a good place to start is to look at the great wars it has fought. And for most of the major powers, the last great war is still World War II. If one asks what this perspective to some contemporary powers, what might it reveal?"

"One overlooked feature in this ongoing tragedy is that Trump isn't wrong about everything. Some of his critics won't admit it, but several of the themes he sounded during the 2016 campaign — such as the need to rebuild America's deteriorating infrastructure — were correct (if far from original), and some of his foreign-policy instincts were sound even if his command of details was not. A minimally competent president could have made substantial progress on most if not all of these fronts, thereby leaving the country better off and enhancing his prospects for a second term."

"If the past 25 years have taught us anything, it is that few foreign-policy problems can be solved simply by blowing things up. The United States is still unsurpassed at that sort of thing, but the real challenge is devising political solutions to conflicts once the guns have fallen silent. We've been singularly bad at this in recent decades, and Trump's disdain for diplomacy and efforts to gut the State Department will just impair us even more."

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.'

"Government bureaucrats have been held in low regard for a long time, which makes them an easy target. But you also can't do anything in public policy without their assistance, and my guess is that Americans will be mighty unhappy when budget cuts, firings, resignations, and the like reduce government performance even more. Get ready for a steady drip, drip, drip of leaks and stories emanating from dedicated civil servants who are committed to advancing the public interest and aren't going to like being treated with contempt and disdain by a bunch of hedge fund managers, wealthy Wall Streeters, or empty suits like Energy Secretary Rick Perry, all led by President Pinocchio."

"As I argued several years ago, the days when the United States could create security and maintain order in nearly every part of the world are behind it, and U.S. leaders must do a better job of deciding which places matter most and which can be left to run themselves. To a large extent, Obama never made that choice."

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.