David Saperstein, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Religious Freedom, spoke on Monday, November 14^th at the Harvard Kennedy School on “U.S. Efforts to Promote Religious Freedom Abroad.” In a wide-ranging discussion moderated by Future of Diplomacy Project Executive Director Cathryn Clüver, the diplomat and rabbi explained the importance of religion and human rights as part of an integrated approach to foreign policy.

Dr. Ian Bremmer, expert in political risk and founder of the Eurasia Group, gave a seminar sponsored by the the Future of Diplomacy Project on Thursday, November 9 at the Harvard Kennedy School, titled “Managing Risk in an Unstable World."

Ambassador Wendy Sherman makes the case that insights from frameworks of personal forgiveness can help nations seize the moment when their interests align and, accordingly, move to achieve political forgiveness. First, the process of forgiveness requires a sense of justice—victims must feel that perpetrators have been held accountable and will no longer be able to hurt them. It must also be a deep, extended undertaking: when perpetrators offer only superficial acknowledgments of the victims’ pain and attempt to move on quickly, victims perceive those efforts as perfunctory, even disingenuous.

Additionally, countries must reestablish genuine, ongoing contact to overcome narratives of “the other” that inhibit forgiveness. They should not assume, however, that political forgiveness will proceed as a linear, three-part process in which the perpetrator issues an apology, the victim accepts the apology, and the two subsequently cultivate their ties on the basis of aligned national interests.

The problem is bad and getting worse almost everywhere. In the United States, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the federal government debt doubled over the past decade, from 36% of GDP to 74% of GDP. It also predicts that, under favorable economic assumptions and with no new programs to increase spending or reduce revenue, the debt ratio ten years from now will be 86% of GDP. Even more worrying, the annual deficit ratio will double in the next decade to 4.9% of GDP, putting the debt on track to exceed 100% of GDP.

The Japanese economy is a paradoxical mixture of prosperity and failure. And, in a significant way, its prosperity makes its failures difficult to address.

Japan’s affluence is palpable to anyone who visits Tokyo. The standard of living is high, with per capita income in 2015 (in terms of purchasing power parity) amounting to $38,000, close to the $41,000 average in France and Britain. The unemployment rate, at 3.3%, is substantially lower than the US rate of 5% and the eurozone rate of about 10%.

"In Northeast Asia, where national security still overwhelmingly dominates the perspectives and behavior of states, nuclear proliferation, both vertical and horizontal, is gaining stronger momentum. China’s recent but substantial investment in modernizing its nuclear arsenal and improving its reprocessing capacity is alarming its neighbors, as well as the United States. The nuclear pursuits of North Korea and, in particular, the acceleration of nuclear and missile tests seem to be spiraling, whereas diplomatic efforts to stop Pyongyang's nuclear path have been futile to date. In addition to its fourth nuclear test in January 2016, a series of missile and rocket tests and the recent firing of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), Pyongyang is reportedly preparing another nuclear weapons test in the coming months..."

Kerry's visit was rich in symbolism, but the real question it triggered is whether President Obama will himself make a trip to Hiroshima when he travels to Japan in May. New reports indicate that Obama may indeed be planning such a trip. This would be a profound act, as no president, while in office, has ever visited the city, and the prospect of this president traveling there has already caused controversy at home and in Japan.

The attackers struck an airport and the subway, but some Belgian investigators believe they seemed to have fallen back on those targets because they felt the authorities closing in on them, and that their original plan may have been to strike a nuclear plant. A few months ago, during a raid in the apartment of a suspect linked to the November attacks in Paris, investigators found surveillance footage of a senior Belgian nuclear official. Belgian police are said to have connected two of the Brussels terrorists to that footage.

Belfer Center Senior Fellow William Tobey is a member of the Committee that produced the report.

Agreement among negotiators from 12 Pacific Rim countries on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) represents a triumph over long odds. Tremendous political obstacles, both domestic and international, had to be overcome to conclude the deal. And now critics of the TPP’s ratification, particularly in the United States, should read the agreement with an open mind.