Transcript: Q&A

Negotiating with Terrorists

Jonathan Powell

CEO, Inter Mediate; Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Tony Blair (1995-2007); Chief Negotiator on Northern Ireland (1997-2007); Author, Talking to Terrorists

Chair: Gordon Corera

Security Correspondent, BBC

23 April 2015

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2 Negotiating with Terrorists Q&A

Gordon Corera

Jonathan, thank you very much. I’ve already got quite a few hands up, so catch my eye.

Question 1

Thank you. My name is Mike Harvey. What is likely to be, or what could cause this mutually hurting stalemate in Israel? How long can it take to reach that?

Jonathan Powell

It seems to me the problem in Israel is that there isn’t now a mutually hurting stalemate. Effectively, the war has worked. It has stopped suicide bombs inside Israel proper. So one side is not hurting. If you look at Cyprus, for example, if you’re a Greek Cypriot, why would you want to make peace? It’s perfectly comfortable living as you are now. There’s not a mutually hurting stalemate. It’s a stalemate, but it doesn’t hurt.

When I first went to Libya about a year ago, I thought, oh good, there’s a mutually hurting stalemate here. There isn’t. There’s a stalemate, but it’s not mutually hurting and both sides can gain a little bit more on each side.

So first thing to remember is that a stalemate is not the same as a mutually hurting stalemate. The second thing is they’re not permanent phenomena. In Sri Lanka, there was briefly a mutually hurting stalemate. The Tigers couldn’t win; the government couldn’t win. At that stage, the Norwegian peace process succeeded. It got to a ceasefire. It started a political process. But Colonel Karuna in the east and his faction of the Tigers defected to the government, and the balance of power changed. So a mutually hurting stalemate is not a permanent situation. It can go away again as fast as it comes.

It seems to me there clearly isn’t a mutually hurting stalemate in the Middle East, nor is there strong leadership. I can’t predict when that would come about again, nor do I particularly want to see people dying so that people have to talk. I’d like to think people would talk even when people aren’t dying.

Question 2

Thank you, Jonathan. Very interesting presentation. I’m a Japanese freelance journalist. My question is about globalization, digitalization, and transnational terrorist organization. In ISIS, there are a lot of players, over 10 players in the region. And also, which government can talk, can negotiate with which terrorist organization? It is very difficult to figure out these days. Terrorist organizations will be more and more transnational, and also it is very difficult to find out where their centre is. How do you [indiscernible] such a kind of transformation?

Jonathan Powell

Very good question. The first thing to say is that it’s interesting that this is not necessarily a new phenomenon. If you look back at the time around the First World War, there was a similar period of very rapid globalization. Terrorists made use of that. They used the 3 Negotiating with Terrorists Q&A

telegraph. The same slogans were shouted in Chicago by anarchist terrorists as were in Milan. They used the same sorts of attacks. They communicated in the same sort of way. So we have seen this global phenomenon in terrorism before. It’s not necessarily new.

Secondly, it seems to me you have to deal with terrorism at the root. In other words, if you were trying to solve the ISIS problem by talking to people in London or Bradford who are attacking people, then you wouldn’t solve the problem. You need to go and address it at its root, which is in the Middle East in that case.

The third point is about global organizations, as Al Qaeda is, and ISIL appears to be becoming. Again, the point about a global group like that is it is both global and national at the same time. If you look at Al Shabaab or you look at Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, they all have very different wishes and demands. You can actually sit with those groups and talk transactional business, whereas that may be more difficult with Al Qaeda central, as far as it still has survived in the bad lands of Afghanistan.

My answer would be that globalization is not new, that you have to find your way to the root of the problem and that if you were starting to talk to groups like this, you would start on a transactional basis in the individual countries where their franchises are.

Question 3

David Blair, Daily Telegraph. Would you talk to ISIS? If you would, could you explain how you would negotiate with a group which, unlike all the other examples you’ve cited today, has no rational or achievable objective?

Jonathan Powell

Yes, I would. The thing we’ve done throughout history is said every time we meet a new terrorist group, that it is completely different from the last one we met. So far, we’ve had four waves of terrorism: the anarchists, the nationalists, the new left and now the religious terrorists. Every time we say they’re completely different.

Of course, they are completely different. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the way that you deal with them is always different. You may find different ways of addressing them. Certainly up until now, we’ve always said every group we’ve met is irrational. Once we’ve talked to them, then we say they are rational, but before we talk to them, we say they are irrational. Actually, they all have a rationality, you just have to find a way of understanding it.

When I left government in 2008, I said we should, on the basis of my experience in government talking to the IRA, we should be talking to Hamas, to the Taliban and to Al Qaeda, three religious groups. Not surprisingly, my colleagues left in the government said this was ridiculous, and while it was fine to talk to good people like the PLO and the IRA, it was terrible to think about talking to these three groups.

Since then, since 2008, the Israeli government has negotiated a ceasefire with Hamas. The American government has negotiated the release of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl with the 4 Negotiating with Terrorists Q&A

Taliban. Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, has said we should be talking to Al Qaeda. So attitudes change. These absolute views we take, ‘These people are irrational, we’ll never deal with them,’ changes over time.

In the case of ISIL, I do not for a moment suggest we should be negotiating with ISIL now. As I say, I distinguish between talking and negotiating. The circumstances for a negotiation require a mutually hurting stalemate, and some strong leadership. However, what’s also true looking back over history is unless you open some of these channels early on, you could spend a very long time fighting and get to a conclusion much later on, with many more people dying entirely unnecessarily.

So if I was in charge of policy, I would certainly use bombing but I would not think that bombing was a strategy that was going to solve the problem of ISIL. It patently won’t. Even if you have boots on the ground, it is not obvious how you would solve the problem of ISIL. That is because ISIL appears to enjoy political support. It is not possible to take the city of Mosul, with 1,000 fighters, unless the population of Mosul thinks you’re probably rather better than the Maliki Shiite sectarian government that they were suffering under before.

Then people say to me, ‘What would you talk to ISIL about?’ Just as I wouldn’t talk to the IRA about united Ireland, but I did talk to them about power sharing, about Irish language, about human rights, in the case of ISIL, when eventually we have a negotiation, the issue we’ll have to address is going to be that role of the Sunnis.

If the Sunnis are disenfranchised in Iraq, if they are suppressed, humiliated and exploited, then we will have a very major problem. The same is true in Syria. There is a real political issue that needs to be addressed. In the end, the reason we were talking to Sinn Féin was not only because they had weapons. It was because they enjoyed a third of the Catholic support, even at the height of the Troubles, in elections. So there’s a political reason you have to talk as well as a military one.

Question 4

Sam Nasif, I’m a journalist from the Middle East. First of all, I would like to comment before the book. The way you wrote it, you linked all the issues together rather than dividing it into chapters – Middle East, Asia, and so on. It’s such an original approach, it makes us all understand that it’s not just a particular phenomenon for a particular region.

But when you come to negotiate with people who do not have a clear aim, and do have other parties behind them who are very powerful and funnelling in money and arms and so on, are they actually the decision-makers regarding what is going to happen? Or is there somebody higher than that? Wouldn’t it be a better approach to try to, not to get involved in military conflicts in these regions, as Tony Blair did, because the more military conflicts we are in – like Iraq, Libya, and places like this, the more terrorists we will have.

Third, are you still an advisor to David Cameron? We heard at one time you were. 5 Negotiating with Terrorists Q&A

Jonathan Powell

Three questions. First question, it is very rare you find groups that have no clear aims. It’s just that we don’t understand their aims. Sometimes they don’t understand their aims. So the point of sitting and talking to them, as I said earlier, it’s very, very unusual to find a purely nihilistic group that has no aim. ISIL uses violence for a purpose. It wants to frighten people so they run away instead of defending themselves. They want to get attention in the West.

Of course, we help it. We play a huge amount more attention when they execute one Western journalist or aid worker than when they execute 300 Syrian soldiers or 200 Kurds. I’m afraid we have a different attitude.

I think talking is part of trying to establish what their aim is. In terms of influence from outside, it is regularly a complicating factor. If you think about Ukraine and the separatists and the influence of the Russians, I would argue that even if the separatists are under the control of the Russians, it’s still worth talking to the separatists, because you need to try and understand how far they have any separate aims, how far they could be persuaded to different steps, despite their masters in Moscow wanting something one way or the other. I think it is always worth talking to try and establish that.

Certainly, in a place like Colombia, where the FARC depending on the support of Venezuela, the switch by Chavez when he got sick – and this is again an interesting phenomenon that happens – when Chavez got cancer, he started going to church twice a day, and he started working to try and bring about peace in Colombia by pressuring the FARC to talk, having been their main beneficiary, person who benefitted them and gave them housing. Outside influence can turn to a positive influence from a negative influence in the course of a negotiating process.

Iraq, my next book is about liberal interventionism, so you’ll have to wait a couple of years for the full answer to that question, and for the Iraq Inquiry, of course. But I’m not sure there’s much evidence that starting wars necessarily makes the overall terrorist problem worse. It may attract terrorists to particular spots to fight, but it doesn’t necessarily cause that.

For example, and this is an answer to your next question, I am still the prime minister’s special envoy in Libya. Luckily not paid on results, because it’s not going splendidly at the moment, but I don’t think that you face terrorism there because we supported the rebels against Gaddafi. I think you face terrorism there because there’s a vacuum with no government. If you have a vacuum in that space, as in Somalia, it will be filled by fighters who will be a threat not just to that country but will be a threat to their neighbours, to Egypt and to Tunisia, to Mali, but also in due course a threat to Europe.

Therefore, it’s no good us staying at home and saying, ‘Let’s leave that problem for someone else to sort out.’ In the end, that problem is coming to us and we should try and sort it out where it is. 6 Negotiating with Terrorists Q&A

Question 5

Thank you very much, indeed. Ewan Grant, former government intelligence analyst. Most of my work, since I left has been in the ex Soviet Union. In relation to your comment about the separatists, I do think there has perhaps been an opportunity missed by perhaps… We need to engage more former military men here, now out of uniform, to speak to the Russians because they will at least respect fellow military people.

My question is about your earlier comment about loss of institutional memory, about how to talk and how to deal. Is that improving on a national or international basis in that we’re keeping some continuity?

Jonathan Powell

Your first comment, I totally agree about involving more military people in these sorts of discussions. It was interesting, for example in Colombia, where a month ago now, the Colombian military sent five generals finally to meet with the FARC to talk about DDR. The relationship is quite different than the political negotiations that have been preceded. Quite often it’s the case that armed groups really long to sit with military men, and we should use that.

In terms of loss of institutional memory, I’m not sure I can honestly say it has got better. One of the reasons I wanted to write the book was to try and make sure that some of these things were written down in one place and people would try and keep them and remember them.

It’s quite interesting if you look back at British history, because having dealt with Ireland in 1921-1922, the people who are administering the colonies in those days remembered the lessons. If you look at Palestine and the battle with the mufti, the correspondence in the Colonial Office in 1926, I think it was, kept on saying, ‘Well I was in Ireland and this is what we did with the IRA.’ Then other people would say, ‘No, no, we definitely don’t want to learn that lesson. We were intending to give Ireland to the Irish. We certainly don’t intend to do that to Palestine.’

So our ability to forget the lessons, or even when we remember them, not to profit from them is extraordinary. I wouldn’t swear we’ve really changed. That’s why I think when we say every terrorist group, of course it’s different, but is there anything we can learn with the way we dealt with the last one that can be profitable this time?

Question 6

Thank you very much. I’m the press attaché at the Embassy of the Sudan in London. Your reference to what happened in our country, the negotiations, in which Britain was involved and the US was involved, stopped the civil war in 2005. It was spot on and I thank you for it. It supports your pragmatic approach. Another detail in your book about the American missile which hit Khartoum north, it did not hit Al Qaeda, because it hit a pharmaceutical factory and the Americans later on recognized that they had wrong intelligence on that. 7 Negotiating with Terrorists Q&A

My second point is that now we have a process of… We have some young people who are sympathetic to ISIS, who were caught training in a remote part of the country, but they were not faced with just military power. They were arrested and then taken to a moderate clergyman who quoted the Koran and the Prophet’s tradition and talked to them day in and day out, and 99 per cent of them changed their mind about extremism.

So power alone in the case of ISIS now will now solve it. You have to also give the moderate Muslims a chance to engage and present a different point of view. Thank you very much.

Jonathan Powell

Thank you. I think you’re quite right about de-radicalization. Saudi Arabia is one case in point where they’ve adopted a very successful policy of de-radicalization and of course in Britain that’s been attempted, too. I haven’t dealt with that in the book, but it is a major stream of how you deal with terrorism. I’ve just focused on one aspect, which is the political talks aspect, but you’re quite right, there’s a series of other steps that need to be taken.

Question 7

Hello. I just want to come back to ISIS, but also to some extent… You’ve been talking about conflicts where you have two parties on the whole who are clearly identifiable. In the case of ISIS, who is supposed to be talking to whom to do anything useful? Would you see this as a need also to expand into a broader field of Sunnis talking to Shias?

Jonathan Powell

You’re spot on. I’ll just break it down into a series of different points. Firstly, actually quite a lot of talks with terrorist groups are multilateral rather than bilateral. Even in Northern Ireland, we had seven or eight parties at the table when we were negotiating. So you very rarely have purely bilateral negotiations. If you think about Burma, for example at the moment, there are 16 armed groups talking to the government. That’s now going to expand into talks including political parties. So it will be some 600 people at the table, which will get quite crowded.

In terms of ISIL, I think really the people they want to speak to are the Americans. In the end, it will be the Americans that need to speak to them as well as the governments of Iraq and Syria if it had a government that they might be prepared to speak to.

I think if we look back at Al Qaeda and Iraq, for example, and Petraeus is quite interesting about that. He does say that they should have started talking to them earlier, if they were going to get the Anbar Awakening, they should have made contact with people who they didn’t like a lot earlier on. We, quite early on, started meeting people in Jordan where we were trying to get a conversation going with disenfranchised Sunnis.

I think part of the trouble is… People will say it’s to do with the invasion, but actually, it’s also to do with pulling out without leaving in place a sectarian government, rather than establishing a real dialogue between that government and the Sunni minority. If that 8 Negotiating with Terrorists Q&A

dialogue had been real, it would be really happening, if their rights had been respected, we might not have faced the ISIL challenge in the same sort of way.

Question 8

Thank you. My name is William Crawley, member of Chatham House. I’d just like to ask you about the vocabulary of terrorism. Mrs Thatcher famously wanted the media, and enforced the BBC, to deny as she thought the terrorists, the oxygen of publicity as she called it. It led to the absurd situation of terrorists being interviewed and their voices being voiced over by actors.

What sort of policy would you pursue in that? Can I ask about the word ‘terrorist’ itself? In relation to domestic considerations, BBC has always used the word terrorist in relation to the IRA. In the World Service, which I worked for for 25 years, the newsroom was very emphatic that we did not use the word ‘terrorist’. We used the word ‘insurgents’ or ‘killers’ or ‘acts of terrorism’, but not ‘terrorists’, and for the reasons that you explained in relation to the IRA.

Jonathan Powell

You’re quite right. I dwell on this in the book a bit, which is that terrorism isn’t a terribly helpful word in this context, because terror is a tactic. It is a tactic that can be used by government, by a deranged individual, by a group to draw attention to itself. So by defining some people as terrorists, you’re really using that as a disparaging term to try and put them beyond the pale.

For example, in Nepal the Maoists were listed as a terrorist group by the US. That did not stop them winning the election, but it did stop the United States being able to talk to the group that won the election. So it’s not a very helpful phrase.

You might ask why did I call the book Talking to Terrorists? The real title of the book is ‘Talking to non-state, armed groups who use terror in pursuit of political aims and enjoy political support’. The publishers pointed out to me that that wouldn’t actually make it onto the front cover, so I couldn’t use that. You’re quite right about the use of the word ‘terrorist’.

Question 9

Thank you. I just would like to raise two points with you. What’s the way forward for Egypt to get [indiscernible] the terrorists in Sinai in particular? And do you think that the Arab Coalition has to stop their war in Yemen?

Jonathan Powell

Gosh. This is the sort of thing that makes me glad I’m not in government anymore, having to answer difficult questions like that. I would be fairly hesitant about giving advice on how to deal with terrorism in Egypt. I would say that what I would worry about, if I was in Egyptian government, is that if you simply use simply military tactics against terrorists, you may end up meta-sizing the problem rather than curing it. You may have that 9 Negotiating with Terrorists Q&A

terrorist problem spread right down the Nile and not just stay on the Sinai. You may find it going right through the whole country.

So I would think quite carefully about what other tools could be used in dealing with terrorists as well as the kinetic tools, because our experience through our long history, starting in 1919, is that if you simply go and engage in punishment attacks by destroying villages, killing people you think are guilty, you will end up with a much bigger terrorist problem than you started with. I wouldn’t be arrogant enough to tell them what to do, but that is one thing that would be on my mind and I would be thinking about if I was the Egyptian government.

In terms of Yemen, I think the situation is just so complicated that I haven’t got a clue what the answer is. But clearly, it’s going to involve talking. What’s quite interesting was the Saudi steps yesterday and the talk about talking, and usually when it’s talk about talking, you end up with some talking happening.

Question 10

Thank you. Stephen Griffith. I was Anglican Chaplain in Damascus for five years, representing the Archbishop of Canterbury to the heads of the churches. Has the Syrian government… You having said what a terrorist is, and that we shouldn’t use the phrase, but I’m going to, has the Syrian government become a terrorist organization?

Jonathan Powell

That’s the problem with the word terrorism, as you say. They certainly use terror, clearly. So from that extent, they are a terrorist organization. So have other governments in the past and even in the present. I guess your question is trying to reach maybe more, should we talk to a government that is a terrorist government? In other words, if it’s okay to talk to terrorists, should we be talking to Assad despite what he’s done to his people?

My view would be that it is worth talking to Assad. I think as with Hitler, you’re unlikely to necessarily be able to negotiate a peace process with him, because one part of the successful peace process will be him going.

One of the interesting things I couldn’t cover in my talk, so you’ve given me an excuse to cover it now, is it’s a changed thing, it’s the balance between peace and justice in these circumstances and that applies to Assad as well. Traditionally, what happened when you had talks with a terrorist group is you’d have an amnesty at the end. You let everyone go. You can’t do that now, because of the ICC. We probably couldn’t do what we did in Northern Ireland in terms of letting prisoners out after only two years, even if they’d murdered someone.

So in this new world, you’re sitting with a terrorist group or with Assad, and you’re asking them to sign an agreement that means them going to jail for 30 years. That is a bit of a disincentive. If you’re sitting there with the leaders of the FARC and you say, ‘Sign there. Straight off to jail,’ they tend to say no. 10 Negotiating with Terrorists Q&A

How do we balance this need for justice and peace? You don’t want the justice to get in the way of the peace. You don’t want to be so doctrinaire. On the other hand, those who argue for justice are quite right, that if you want a lasting peace, you have to find some way of addressing the rights of the victims who have been abused in the process. You need to find some way of actually having that justice.

So far, the world has not yet found the right answer to that. It comes to a head in places like Colombia, where a peace process is making progress, and if it succeeds it will be the first one that has succeeded since the establishment of the ICC and we’ll have to find an answer to that.

Question 11

Hi, I’m Zara from the BBC. I wanted to come back to Libya, because it’s a very pressing issue at this time. What if you have multiple actors or multiple terrorists that you need to negotiate with, such as is the case in Libya? What is the solution if that’s the case? Would that prevent people leaving the country and possibly dying at sea?

Jonathan Powell

For what it’s worth, I think that the only way to stop refugees fleeing… They’re not from Libya, people using Libya as a starting place, is to try and establish an effective government in Libya. I mean, the previous boat people used to flee from Egypt or from Tunisia until the government managed to establish an effective way of stopping people leaving their shores.

In Libya, there is no government. Until you have a government, it’s very hard to see who could stop people fleeing in that way. I don’t think there’s a military answer to that. I mean, the idea of bombing boats or bombing people traffickers strikes me as slightly bizarre.

How do you actually go about that? There’s a reason for hope and for worry. The reason for hope is that Libya is not Iraq or Syria. It does not have the sectarian or religious divisions that you have in Syria and Iraq. Everyone is a conservative Sunni Maliki and they basically have the same faith. Frankly, there are very few religious divisions in the country or even very few political divisions. So it is an easier problem to resolve, in theory than Iraq or Syria.

On the other hand, Libya has never had any real institutions that we would recognize as institutions. It certainly didn’t under Gaddafi. It didn’t really under the king and certainly not under Italian or Turkish colonialism. So you were dealing with the last bit of white space on the world map, that’s never had the sense of a nation. That makes it very difficult to get people to see a common cause for a nation and why they should make compromises for the good of the nation.

They have their group, their clan, their city, their tribe or whatever it might be. Persuading people to make concessions is extremely difficult in those circumstances. That’s why it’s taken so long. I do think the UN has done a very good job and a very activist job in getting people together. I do hope that it can succeed in getting to a national 11 Negotiating with Terrorists Q&A

unity government, because it’s only that national unity government that will, for a start, save lives inside Libya itself. It will stop the spread of terrorism and weapons and will also hopefully stop the spread of people drowning in the Mediterranean in this way.

Question 12

Thank you, Mr Powell. Just getting back to this concept of mutual hurt, and you spoke about the wall, how that has altered the balance. But is it possible that the balance met yet again be rectified or evened out by pressure from outside? Obviously the only country that could possibly exert that is America, but is that politically unrealistic?

Jonathan Powell

Well, you raise an interesting issue which is the different types of mediator you could have and different types of pressures. So the United States in the Middle East is a very strong mediator. They can change facts on the ground, in security terms, economic terms. In Northern Ireland, we and the Irish government were a powerful mediator. Most mediators nowadays are very week – NGOs or individuals who have very little power.

In the case of the Middle East, it’s not I think so much that an outside power would create a mutually hurting stalemate, because no one wants more people to die or to suffer, to bring about a negotiation. I think the Obama administration has tried extremely hard to bring about negotiations. John Kerry has been indefatigable in trying to use American power to bring about a negotiation, but so far unsuccessfully. No doubt he’ll try again before the end of this administration.

But that influence shouldn’t be exaggerated. It can’t force countries or groups to negotiate against their will. Interestingly, if you look back at the IRA in 1919-1921, the American government at the time was pressing the British government very hard to negotiate and of course, the British government was very much at the mercy of the American government in terms of its debts, in terms of the Washington Naval Treaty and so on.

So there was an attempt to use pressure to get the British to negotiate, but actually in the end, the British did what they wanted to do in those circumstances, rather than anything else. I guess this is a long-winded way of saying I wouldn’t hold your breath in hoping that external influence will be used sufficiently to bring about a settlement, although I hope it might make some progress in it.

Question 13

My name is Ewan Duncan. I served in Iraq and Afghanistan and in Northern Ireland, but my question is really about British foreign policy. I wonder if you’d comment on our foreign policy in recent times, because everything that we’ve talked about today, the invasion of Iraq and what it provoked on the grounds that we invaded. Maybe in 10 years’ time Chilcott will answer that question. In Afghanistan, there’s a clear case for going in. Afterwards, debateable. And of course, what happened in Syria, in Libya, we had a fair old hand in provoking that, I would contend. 12 Negotiating with Terrorists Q&A

I wonder if you’d comment on foreign policy in the UK and how successful it’s been and where it should go in the future.

Jonathan Powell

As I said, my next book is about liberal interventionism. It’s going to deal with every single one of those issues and I’ll have a very considered view in three years’ time. However, without a considered view, what I find quite interesting is that we veer from one extreme to another. In Rwanda we don’t do anything, and we let a million or more people die. In Bosnia, we do almost nothing and let hundreds of thousands of people die. Then in Kosovo, we intervened against the United Nations, without UN authorization, against the Russian will, and that was relatively successful relatively quickly.

Sierra Leone, a tiny country, we intervened very successfully and very quickly. Afghanistan, we went in, I guess the jury would be out on how much good we did rather than bad. Iraq, I mean the balance is not looking terribly good at the moment in Iraq.

Then Libya, we sort of intervened from the air but don’t go in on the ground. Then what happens when I go to Libya is people complain to me. Why did you not, after you’d done the bombing, why didn’t you come and help us build a state? Why did you go away? Which is a bit unfair, because at the time the people in government in Libya were asking us to go away.

People here were learning the lesson from Iraq, we shouldn’t go in and be Bremer and try and tell them what to. Now they’re telling us they wish we had done that and not left them with anarchy. In Syria, we don’t intervene and we end up with a whole lot more suffering than there is in Iraq. I mean, really one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

So it seems to me, we need to draw some sort of general lessons. If we go from Rwanda to Iraq and back and forth again the whole time, driven by what happened last time you can remember, which is maybe 15 months ago, then we’re not going to learn anything. That’s the point to try to draw some more general conclusions.

Unfortunately, I think it’s the case that it’s going to be quite hard for Britain to play a leading role in that. We’ve run our armed forces down to such an extent that it’s going to be quite hard for us to intervene in Brighton let alone anywhere else.

Gordon Corera

While we wait for that next book, the current book is here on sale. You can get yourself a signed copy. Thank you all very much for coming and for your questions. Thank you, Jonathan.