Columbia International Affairs Online: Working Papers

CIAO DATE: 05/2012

Diplomacy in a Dangerous World: A Conversation with America's Top Diplomats

R. Nicholas Burns, David D. Newsom, Marc Grossman, Robert Kimmitt, Thomas R. Pickering

January 2008

Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

Abstract

On October 29, 2007, the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy hosted a roundtable with Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns, and his predecessors as Under Secretaries from past administrations. This was a rare opportunity to hear from the nation’s top diplomatic practitioners together in one room. The Under Secretary for Political Affairs is the third most senior position in the State Department, and traditionally at the center of U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy formulation.