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Jonathan Power is a columnist, film-maker and writer. For the first ten years after graduate school community work in slum neighborhoods in Chicago and London. Worked for Martin Luther King 1966-1967. Jonathan Power is one of the world's leading columnists on international affairs, human rights and peace. He syndicates his columns with some 50 papers around the world. History tells us that war is becoming old fashioned --May 4, 2007  Are the great powers really as war-prone as the traditional balance of power theorists, like former secretary of state, Henry Kissinger and Chicago professor, John Mearsheimer, argue? I think the evolution of history in all its complexity tells us something else. Even though human beings have made war as far back as we know this doesn't predetermine our future, and it doesn't necessarily prove there will be more of the same. Read more>> We must understand the causes of war --April 27, 2007 "The practice of violence", wrote the political philosopher, Hannah Arendt, "changes the world, but the most probable change is a more violent world". Don't we know it from Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq? We learn fitfully, and too late - usually only after needless suffering and untold numbers of casualties, the majority these days "innocents". As one Northern Irish politician lamented recently, observing the recent peace agreement between the ultra Protestant, Ian Paisley and the former IRA leader, Gerry Adams, "This was Sunningdale (the aborted peace agreement of 1973) for late learners." Read more>> The press is paying patsy with terrorist propaganda --April 6, 2007 Doubtless, at the moment of impact, the shards of the suicide bombers' device will turn me into an emotional wreck, not to say a physical mess. But until that moment arrives I trust that I am in charge of my mental faculties. Pace 9/11, I am not afraid of terrorism, even though I lived in London during the worst years of IRA activity and already this year I missed a terrorist attack on my hotel in Islamabad by only a couple of days. Read more>> Europe's alternative model to American war-making --March 30, 2007 When, two centuries ago, Sweden was defeated by Russia enough people in Sweden said "never again". And Sweden, once one of the great powers of Europe, turned inward to concentrate on its own economic and political development. The Napoleonic wars were followed by almost two hundred years when peace was perceived as Swedish and wars as European. Reda more>> At last a debate on Britain's nuclear weapons --March 21, 2007 On its submarines Britain has 48 nuclear warheads, each one eight times as powerful as the nuclear bomb that obliterated Hiroshima. In other words, Prime Minister Tony Blair theoretically could order the almost instant incineration of 384 large cities around the world. Read more>> Time to end the stereotyping of Africa! --March 16, 2007 Another Africa film - this time the riveting "Blood Diamond", last month the superbly acted "Last King of Scotland", and "Out of Africa" still vibrates in my mind ten years later. But am I alone in being rather cross when my 16 year old daughter asks me yet again, "Is Africa really like that?" Reda more>> Talk to your enemies --January 25, 2007 Pervez Musharraf, president and military strong man of Pakistan, opened his eyes wide, sat bolt upright on his sofa, and said, "I never thought of that". He repeated the phrase and looked, I dare to suggest, a little bewildered. In many years of interviewing top leaders I have never before felt the sensation of catching someone totally off balance. Yet all I had asked was, "Why don't you talk to your enemies, the Taliban and Al Qaeda?" Read more>> A new UN for a new Secretary-General --January 4, 2007 With a new secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, at the helm of the UN hopes are again being raised. The UN has never been so active - new peacekeeping ventures appear to go into the works every few months. Read more>> Walkers of the world, unite! --December 27, 2006 After the downs of 2006 surely 2007 can only be up? Don't be so sure but there is one thing we can all do to save the planet from mankind's excess - a little more walking. Read more>> Making a lot of progress on poverty --December 20, 2006 The horror of Sudan was on the front page three times last week. The extraordinary economic progress made by Africa, and many other parts of the Third World, as recorded and analysed in a new World Bank report released last Thursday, was mentioned a bare once in a shortish item on the business page. Read more>> Waging peace in 2006 --December 29, 2005 Americans seem to have less appetite for war than before. In took the best part of a decade for public opinion to swing firmly against the Vietnam War. This time in Iraq it has taken barely three years. Read more>>
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