Jonathan Powell
Jonathan Powell
Jonathan Nicholas Powellis a British diplomat who served as the first Downing Street Chief of Staff, under British Prime Minister Tony Blair from 1995 to 2007. He was the only senior adviser to last the whole period of Blair’s leadership. During this period Powell was also the chief British negotiator on Northern Ireland...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionDiplomat
Date of Birth14 August 1956
counter difficult power practical reasons targets terms tool understand
Terrorism is resorted to for practical reasons because there is no other tool available. And those who use terrorism, and then subsequently become the targets of terrorism, understand its power and how difficult it is to counter it. Not just militarily. But especially in terms of international perception.
alluring candidate fact feet job likes maybe mean quite remember speech
Maybe strong leaders are not quite as alluring as we think, and we should celebrate the fact that our leaders are just like us. Just because one candidate can't remember his whole speech and the other likes to put his feet up on the job doesn't mean they can't govern.
seems twin ugly vulnerable
Terrorism seems to be the ugly twin of democracy. We need to learn to live with it because we are vulnerable to it.
begin collective confront experience historical military purely seem solution suffer talk tells terrorist time
When it comes to terrorism, governments seem to suffer from a collective amnesia. All of our historical experience tells us that there can be no purely military solution to a political problem, and yet every time we confront a new terrorist group, we begin by insisting we will never talk to them.
agreement fairy happily peace
A peace agreement isn't like a fairy story. You don't live happily ever after.
government grab interested israeli lasting peace people saw skeptical wants
The Israeli people are skeptical about the chances of a long-term peace, but if they saw it, they'd grab it. Any Israeli government that wants to be reelected should be interested in a lasting peace.
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Every time we meet a new terrorist group, we argue they are utterly different and we can learn nothing from the last time. Of course they are different, but some lessons on how we deal with them seem to apply in all cases.
closed people sausage
You can't negotiate in public. People won't make concessions in public. They will do that in private. Like sausage making, you have to do it behind closed doors.
british cold enjoy media middle ministers night prime seems send senior soldiers sweat wake war worrying worst
There seems to be a sense in the British media that prime ministers enjoy going to war. They do not. The decision to send British soldiers into battle is the worst and most stomach-churning senior politicians have to take. It makes them wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat worrying if they have done the right thing.
accepted applied films foreign job turned
I started off in radio, then made little films for Granada. I applied for a job at 'Weekend World,' and they turned me down; I'd also applied to the Foreign Office, which accepted me.
ireland northern suffers
Northern Ireland still suffers from its past, and it will take generations to escape sectarianism and for violence to end totally. Nonetheless, it is in a different place now than during the Troubles, and it will not go back to the old days.
officer schools time
It was the rootlessness that went with being the son of an RAF officer that shaped me. I had been to 11 schools by the time I was 9.
approach critics equate
You should never appease terrorists. The mistake made by critics of the 'talking to your enemy' approach is to equate talking with appeasing.
expected greater mere since time unlike
Since the beginning of time, we have expected our leaders to be supermen, unlike mere mortals. We want them to be much greater than us so that we can look up to them.