R. Nicholas Burns

November 13, 2008

Speech to the Center for the Advanced Study of India

Speech

By R. Nicholas Burns, Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics

"It wasn’t that our motives were cynical or misplaced or that we wished misfortune for each other.  We were never adversaries.  In fact, time and again, from Harry Truman to JFK to Ronald Reagan, American Presidents called for a positive breakthrough in our relations with India.  But, more often than not, and for different reasons, we never found the trust that governments need to develop a true partnership. Happily, that all changed when, on the American side, President Clinton and then President Bush made the ambitious and prescient strategic bet that India would rise in our time as one of the world’s great powers and that therefore we had, as a matter of basic self-interest, to forge a much closer relationship with it."

October 25, 2008

"We Should Talk to Our Enemies"

Op-Ed, Newsweek

By R. Nicholas Burns, Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics

As Americans learned all too dramatically on 9/11 and again during the financial crisis this autumn, we inhabit a rapidly integrating planet where dangers can strike at any time and from great distances. And when others -- China, India, Brazil -- are rising to share power in the world with us, America needs to spend more time, not less, talking and listening to friends and foes alike.

August 19, 2008

Former U.S. Diplomat R. Nicholas Burns Appointed to Harvard Kennedy School Faculty

Press Release

By Doug Gavel and R. Nicholas Burns, Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics

R. Nicholas Burns, formerly the highest-ranking career diplomat at the U.S. Department of State, has been appointed Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics. He will serve on the Board of Directors at Belfer Center.