Energy

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.

Just months into his young presidency, it is clear that Europe cannot presume an even keel, firm alliance, or historically-shared interests with the United States of Donald Trump. The West, as long understood, is in hiatus. Europe must act accordingly.

Faculty Director Nicholas Burns speaks with Douglas Alexander about the future of the UK just days after Prime Minister Theresa May triggered Article 50, initiating the separation between Europe and the United Kingdom Alexander previews the road ahead, identifying the underlying contradictions that that led to Brexit and how they might manifest themselves in other parts of the world.

Forty-four years after the United Kingdom entered into an often tempestuous but not always loveless union with Europe, Prime Minister Theresa May will trigger formal divorce proceedings Wednesday.

At the heart of the British position in these complex negotiations is a simple trade-off between sovereignty and prosperity.

Ambassador João Vale de Almeida, European Union Ambassador to the United Nations, spoke at the Kennedy School as part of the Future of Diplomacy Project’s annual ‘Europe Week’ series.

Cambridge, MA- Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, during the Harvard Future of Diplomacy Project’s Europe Week series, gave a pragmatic view of the future of European security and Germany’s changing role in geopolitics during a seminar moderated by FDP Executive Director Cathryn Cluver.

In an interview with Amin Arefi of French magazine Le Point, Ambassador (ret.) Nicholas Burns reflects on the first ten days of the Trump administration and the trajectory of American foreign policy going forward. Burns explains the fundamental differences between Donald Trump and George W. Bush, and the  worrying implications of Trump's indifference towards the US-backed system of alliances that has upheld the liberal world order for the past seven decades.   

America and the world have yet to see the likes of this: a newly elected administration that is setting out with manic energy to destroy in mere days what took decades to build. Perhaps the most important and, for friends of the United States, the most painful collateral damage: America’s standing as the world’s moral leader defending democracy, human rights, the rights of minorities and transparency.