Nuclear Security Matters

Withdrawing from the Paris agreement is bad for science-based decision making, national and energy security, and innovation.

Foreign policy experts said the move could damage the United States’ credibility and weaken Mr. Trump’s efforts to negotiate issues far beyond climate change, like trade and terrorism.

“From a foreign policy perspective, it’s a colossal mistake — an abdication of American leadership,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a retired career diplomat and an under secretary of state for President George W. Bush.

“The success of our foreign policy — in trade, military, any other kind of negotiation — depends on our credibility,” Mr. Burns said. “I can’t think of anything more destructive to our credibility than this.”

As the Trump Administration considers options to break the stalemate in the 15-year war in Afghanistan, it is important to look beyond military approaches. The roots of Afghanistan's problems require a political surge in support of President Ashraf Ghani’s government.

"During his first 100 days in office, US President Donald Trump reversed many of the major positions on defense and trade policy that he had advocated during his presidential campaign. And these reversals have yielded some positive results."

"U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has now released its budget plans for fiscal year 2018. Among the details provided in the document, entitled America First – A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again, are projections for the expected path of gross federal debt as a percentage of GDP, which is shown to decline from its current level of about 106% to about 80% in 2027. Debt held by the public is expected to mirror this path, shrinking from 77% to 60% over this period....Unfortunately, neither projection is credible."

Samantha Power, United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 until 2017, has been named to a joint faculty appointment at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School. 

On February 17, the Belfer Center co-convened the inaugural round of the “Trilateral Dialogue: Opportunities and Challenges for U.S.-China-Korea Cooperation” in Seoul, South Korea.

When Ben Buchanan received his first computer 17 years ago, he could not have known that the technical skills he acquired would prove vital to understanding today's cybersecurity dilemma.

On March 3, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Harvard University at the invitation of Professors Nicholas Burns (HKS), Robert Mnookin (HLS), and James Sebenius (HBS) in one of her first public engagements since last autumn.

Former NATO Ambassador Douglas E. Lute joined the Belfer Center in April as a Senior Fellow with the Center’s Future of Diplomacy Project.