The FRONTLINE Interviews
Jonathan Powell
Former Chief of Staff to the U.K. Prime Minister
Jonathan Powell served as chief of staff to British Prime Minister Tony Blair from 1997 to 2007. He is the founder and director of Inter Mediate, a charity focused on mediation and negotiation as a means of conflict resolution worldwide.
The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Jim Gilmore on May 10, 2021. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Global Reaction to 9/11
So, Jonathan, let's start out, just give me a brief—especially from the decade that you were working with Tony Blair.
I was a British diplomat for a good part of my life, and then when Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party, he recruited me to be his chief of staff in opposition.And then I went with him into Downing Street for the full 10 years as his chief of staff there, handling everything from domestic policy to foreign policy to Northern Ireland.
We're starting this film looking at 9/11, the moment when congressmen and -women were on the steps of the Capitol building singing “God Bless America” together, very bipartisan moment, a very humble moment when the world was very, very supportive of the United States.Take us back to that period of time and how, for instance, the U.K. looked at America.What was America at that moment?
Well, I think there was a great outpouring of—actually, of love for America, of support and of solidarity.Tony Blair was down at the Trades Union Congress meeting in Brighton, ready to give his speech, his annual speech there.I was in a meeting.… And when I saw the second plane going in, I quit the meeting, called Tony.Tony gave up his speech and came back up to London.I was one of the first to go on television to express that solidarity with the United States, that feeling that we were all with the United States.And the shock and the horror was not just confined to those in New York and those in the U.S., but to all of us in Europe and around the world.
The historic support, for instance, of NATO, of Russia, actually coming out and being very, very supportive of the United States, was there a moment there for a change for a new world order in a way that maybe got away from us?
Yes, I think there probably was.I mean, I remember [Vladimir] Putin calling Tony Blair pretty soon after, the same day, because everyone was trying to get through to George Bush and couldn't get through, because he was flying around the United States on Air Force One.And Putin called Tony and said, “What do we do?What should we—how should we pull together on this issue?What can we do in Russia to help?” And then, on his first trip immediately after that, where Tony was trying to put together a coalition of support, we flew to Moscow to go and meet with Putin and discuss what could be done.
And had we played our cards differently, the West, in those circumstances, maybe, maybe we could have actually done something much more positive to bring the world together in a common attitude.
On that first night, President Bush came back to the White House, and he gave a speech where he talked about the fact that this fight was going to be about between good and evil.He quoted from the Bible.Did he understand who the enemy was at that point, do you believe, looking back now, at this point?
I think there was still some unclarity.I think it was the second phone call we had with George Bush, he talked about Iraq and threw that into the conversation, which quite alarmed us.And Tony Blair said, “No, no, we must focus on Afghanistan, and focus on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.” And so, to George Bush's credit, that's exactly what he did.So I think there was some shock, still, at the first stages.The first time Tony spoke to George Bush immediately after 9/11, he was in a state of shock, and the conversation was quite unsettling, I have to say, from our end, about what was his real state of mind.The second one, he was more confident.But we had this thing about Iraq.But soon after that, he was on a very clear trajectory.… He was actually going to address the problem properly, and in a considered way.And that was the right thing to do.
Talk a little bit about Tony Blair's support for Bush and the administration at that point.He was there at the speech before Congress, for instance.Were you there with him at that point?And what did that represent?
Yes, I was with him.And it was an important visit.As always in these things, there's competition in visits, and Jacques Chirac managed to get to New York before us, because he was keying to be the first European to get to the site of the attack.But Tony was the second visitor there.And we flew down from New York to Washington.And Tony actually arrived quite late, because the traffic in New York was so bad, we couldn't get out of town.But George Bush was remarkably relaxed.He rearranged his schedule, even though he was just about to give this speech to Congress.
And he spent a lot of time with Tony up in the private quarters before going down to Congress, and we all went along for the speech.And it was a remarkable event again.It was really very emotional.And I thought George Bush both had a very good speech that was written for him, and delivered it extremely well.
Failure to Capture Osama bin Laden
I'm going to jump around.We've got a lot of ground to cover here.But talk a little bit about Tora Bora and the results of not capturing bin Laden at that moment.He escapes.Talk a little bit about that moment, not catching him, and how historically—the consequences.
One thing people don't always appreciate is the fog of war.I mean, people talk about the fog of war, but it is really confusing.If you're sitting in No. 10 Downing Street, or probably in the White House, trying to follow what's happening on the ground is extraordinarily difficult.You keep having incidents, and George Bush would call up and say, “We've got Mullah Omar in our sights.We're just about to get him.” There's a Predator overhead, and then it doesn't happen.Nothing happens.
And you always wonder what's real and what's not real in these circumstances?So even during the battle of Tora Bora, I don't know that we fully took in the significance at the time of the escape of Osama bin Laden at that stage, because it just seemed like another incident in this fog of war, rather than the defining incident when he got away, because if he hadn't been able to hide out in Pakistan, then it might have been a different consequence.Had he had to keep on hiding in Afghanistan, it might have been easier to have—to have caught him.
But looking back, obviously that was a significant moment, when he was able to keep being out there, keep provoking, keep being a running sore for the United States in a way that he wouldn't have been if he'd been captured early on.
Guantanamo
Some of the initial decisions on how to handle prisoners from the war in Afghanistan, the United States opens up Guantanamo Bay.And all of a sudden, in the press, on the front pages of the world, are pictures of detainees in their orange jumpsuits, and the cages where they were kept, and the idea that they weren't on United States land; they were on Cuban land.Talk a little bit about how the world saw that.Did that damage the view of American world values?Was that sort of the beginning of a slippery slope?
Oh, it certainly has been a problem over the years since.I'm not sure how much it was an immediate problem, because at that stage, people were still much more in the shock of—and the horror of what had happened on 9/11.So dealing with prisoners in this way was less shocking at that stage than later, when people came to consider the consequences.So it was one of these many things where if we look back now, you're judging in retrospect, whereas if you were there at the time, it looked less of a major step.And people understood, technically, why they had to be in Guantanamo, not on the continental United States.
But the orange jumpsuits, the headphones, the eye covers, all of this did look terribly depersonalizing and didn't come across well, I suspect, not just for European audiences, but probably for audiences around the world.
Invading Iraq
Let's talk about Iraq.In January of '02, Bush gave the famous “axis of evil” speech.Talk a little bit, of course, what that defined for many was that this was going to be an expansion of a war.What was the view from London at that point?
For us, that speech wasn't such a defining moment.Sometimes in speeches, the speechwriter comes up with a very neat phrase that has more impact than it was probably intended to do.For us, as I say, at the beginning, we tried to keep President Bush focused on Afghanistan.That seemed to us what the issue was.That's what had to be dealt with.And then we started picking up signals before that speech that mood was shifting towards taking action in Iraq, and we monitored it very, very closely.
And then we started getting involved, trying to get involved in the discussion, with Tony Blair writing various notes for President Bush about what he should think about doing and what he should think about not doing.And it was really, I think, a bit later, more by the time we got to the visit to Crawford, when we went to visit George Bush at his ranch, that we began to see quite how serious the intention was on Iraq, rather than just at the time of the speech.And then later, of course, we had the whole U.N. experience that we went through.So I don't think for us it was some blinding light from his speech.It was a process that we had monitored very, very closely and gradually built up.And actually, even by the time we come to the fall of 2002, I'm not sure we were convinced that there was going to be a war in Iraq.
Talk a little bit about the Crawford trip, where Blair warned Bush of the unintended consequences, and specifically of post-invasion.
Yes, we did a lot of preparation for the visit to Crawford.We had a series of meetings here in the U.K. We spent a lot of time on the plane working on what to do.And then Tony went to see George Bush by himself for the first evening.We stayed in a hotel nearby, and then we joined him at breakfast the next morning.Actually, quite a lot of the discussion was on the Middle East peace process, and the progress that Colin Powell was trying to make.And Tony Blair saw this as integrally connected to what was happening in Afghanistan and the fight against Al Qaeda, because he saw the importance of removing the grievances that these terrorists could use as an excuse for their actions.So he saw the two things intimately connected.
But then he went through, with George Bush, what he thought the strategy should be on Iraq and how it was necessary to build an international coalition.I think Tony thought that his contribution on Afghanistan had been to persuade George Bush to go for the widest possible coalition, and he wanted to do the same thing on Iraq.If you're going to take these steps, you need to have as much international support as possible, because there will be unintended consequences when you go into Iraq, that's for sure, and you're much better able to deal with those if you've got the widest possible international support behind you.
And the response to the warning of unintended consequences was what from the president?
Well, I think he agreed.He said he didn't argue back.But of course the trouble with unintended consequences are you don't know what they are.So it's always, as Donald Rumsfeld rather memorably put it, you don't know what these consequences are going to be.And so sometimes you put them to one side.And that's a big mistake.And we've seen that over the last two decades.
Colin Powell and Weapons of Mass Destruction
You knew that Powell was—you talked about, in the past, that Powell was concerned about post-invasion and that he, in some ways, wanted the U.K. to exert influence on Bush.Talk a little bit about the concerns that Colin Powell had and what it meant to you folks over in London.
Well, Colin Powell had obviously been through wars, unlike the rest of us.He'd actually fought in them, and particularly in the first Gulf War.So he more than anyone knew the danger of unintended consequences and was really thinking about them.And he had a very close relationship with Jack Straw, our foreign secretary at the time.So he would tend to feed his views to Jack, who would then feed them to us in No. 10 Downing St.Sometimes I think Colin Powell wanted us to fight his battles in the White House.That we were just not able to do.It's not the place of the United Kingdom.
But he was certainly very anxious about the direction that the administration was going in, particularly the neocons, rather than perhaps Bush himself.But he was losing the argument inside the bureaucracy in Washington, and he was trying to use us as an ally, and we weren't necessarily the best ally he could have in that regard.
Why him as the person to sell it to the world in that U.N. speech?
Well, I think that's very obvious: because he had the credibility.He had remarkable credibility around the world.I think people—many people in the business, anyway—knew that he had doubts about this.And so if he was saying it, then people would be much more likely to believe that than had it been some other spokesman who had less credibility.
One other thing on this that I missed is this idea that you talked about, is that Iraq was always, from very early on, was on a front burner for the Bush administration.And 9/11 allowed them or made them more willing to be preemptive.Why is that important to understand?
I think it's important to understand something that Tony Blair always says, which is that 9/11 changed everything for the United States.You know, the Bush administration, when it came in, was very much an administration that was not going to get involved in foreign adventures.Condi Rice had made a series of speeches about not spending blood and treasure internationally.And when we first went to meet George Bush, we were trying to persuade him to be more internationally engaged rather than less internationally engaged.But 9/11 changed everything, where everything was a threat that you had to preempt rather than wait till it hit you.And I think that's why Iraq went right up the agenda.
Now, of course, there were people in the administration who had long-term agendas on Iraq and wanted to take action.But the reason they were able to win the argument against people like James Baker and President Bush's father, who weren't in the administration, but were counseling much more care in this, the reason they were able to win was because of the fear of the consequences of not taking action.I think that's what changed.
The effect on the worldview when weapons of mass destruction were not found?
Well, one of the things that Tony Blair had particularly been arguing about the whole way through was the danger of this, was the combination of terrorists like Al Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction.What you really didn't want was those two things to come together, and so you should be acting to stop all of those things together.And hence, Afghanistan, trying to stop Al Qaeda and Iraq, trying to deal with weapons of mass destruction.
When it was revealed there were no weapons of mass destruction, we were like idiots, because we had claimed absolutely there would be weapons of mass destruction.We never had any doubt there were weapons of mass destruction.We had bombed Iraq with Bill Clinton in 1998 because we believed there were weapons of mass destruction, and then Saddam had kicked the inspectors out, preventing us finding them.So it came as a real shock.And we knew the political consequences for us of this discovery.
So it was a real extraordinary revelation, and really, very difficult for us to understand.I think we do understand it now.Some of the interrogations of Saddam have made it clear why he thought it important to keep the doubt about whether or not he had weapons of mass destruction.But his bluff led us to take action that otherwise we would not have been able to take.
And the consequences for Bush administration?
They seemed to be much less severe.For them, I don't know.For us, politically, this was a very serious matter.It never seemed to be quite such a worry for the U.S. administration as it was for us.I remember a lot of conversations saying, “What are we going to do about this?” And for George Bush, it was much less of a live political issue than it was for us, where it was really very serious.
One thing that does happen is there's a pivot at this point.Instead of weapons of mass destruction being the entire reason why we're fighting here, it pivoted to Bush's Freedom Agenda.Just democratic values—that's why we were there.A very big, big issue.How did you view it at the time?
Well, remember, we were coming from a very different direction at all this.Tony Blair had set out in the Chicago speech, during Bill Clinton's presidency, a theory of intervention, when you should intervene and when you should not intervene for humanitarian purposes.So we were sort of liberal internationalists.We were arguing that what you want to do is go in and try and help when people are being massacred, as in Kosovo, help when democracy is being undermined.And George Bush and many of the people in his administration were coming from a very different realist-type foreign policy, about American power and asserting American power and fighting for American values, I guess, in these countries.So we were coming from very different directions, but it coincided in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I don't think it was so much a conscious bit, because I remember Dick Cheney talking about some of this stuff when we went to Camp David, really very early on.So for him, this was a continuity.He thought that it was the right thing to fight for liberty, although it's quite hard to square that with the things that Rumsfeld says about, after we went into Afghanistan, we don't do nation building, because if you are actually fighting for liberty—and this is maybe one of the fundamental flaws in this whole thing—if you are fighting for liberty, it's no good just going in and kicking out a dictator or trying to chase the terrorists out.You've got to help build institutions, as we've seen in Libya and elsewhere.
So I think the flaw is that if you think you're doing this in order to try and help establish democracy, you're going to have to a, be very patient, and b, really work on it, not just send some troops in who can't even keep control, as in the case of Iraq, after we first went in.
But the consequences as far as you view it, of going that big, I mean, changing a country, bringing democracy to an area that's not used to it after the invasion, what are the consequences?Looking back, what are the consequences of going that big in this adjusted point of view that took place after weapons of mass destruction?
I actually think the problem was going not big enough.I think the problem in Iraq was going in with many too few troops, not adequately trained in policing, which was the immediate requirement.Once the anarchy broke loose in Iraq after the invasion, at first there was a period of quiet.People were shocked.But there were not enough people on the ground to keep control.The Saddam machine had collapsed.And people started looting.From then on, really, we never got control of the anarchy again.And then people had this choice: Do we have democracy and anarchy, or do we have a dictator who keeps the peace?And for them, that became a very difficult choice.So I think the problem is, it's no good wishing for helping people to build institutions, to have accountable governments, if you're not going to will the means.You have to do both.
And the decisions that were made on the ground by [L. Paul] Bremer and the CPA and from Washington about the Iraqi military and such being disbanded.So as you were looking at it, the fact that there didn't seem to be a real plan, that it was sort of day by day how decisions were coming down, what was the view in London of what was taking place?
Well, our problem was that we were co-responsible for this, because we went with the invasion.But we could get no handle whatsoever on what was happening.We actually started with fortnightly video conferences with President Bush, trying to make suggestions of things that should happen.I'm not claiming we were right always, or even better, but we at least tried to get a handle on it.
But that didn't succeed.So then we asked for the generals on the ground, for Bremer to be part of those conferences.And we did.But we found what was happening was like a black box in which we couldn't penetrate.And I think, in retrospect, what happened was, Rumsfeld got control of this thing.The State Department was kept out.Liberal interferers like us were kept out.And decisions were made on a particular trajectory which we were unable to influence.Now I'm not saying we'd have suddenly been brilliant and solved the problem, but it meant that it was all run in one particular way, with the consequences that we saw subsequently. …
The way Rumsfeld downplayed the insurgency, what were the consequences?
Well, I think he was constantly trying to justify his initial decision to go in with very few troops.He thought he wanted to do the opposite of Gulf War I, where Colin Powell and others insisted going in very, very heavy.He wanted to go in light.And by going in light, then you have—you have to sort of say that the insurgency isn't that big.Otherwise, you're going to have to admit you were wrong and put many more troops in.So I think a lot of it was about back-covering justification of the initial position.
And it's interesting reading Rumsfeld's biography, where he sort of tries to eschew responsibility for what happened in Iraq after the invasion, saying it was other people.He had no control over it.That's not the way I remember it.
Did you have many dealings with Rumsfeld?
Not many, but a few, yes.
Give us a thumbnail of what he was like.
Well, he had very strong opinions, and he didn't hesitate to argue his opinions on these sort of issues.I'm not sure how seriously he took us in the U.K. on all this stuff.I think he thought he was plowing his own particular furrow.But he would often be on some—some calls we did with President Bush.And Vice President Cheney was also—always had to be somewhere separate, so was always in a little box up in the corner of the screen when we had these video conferences with Bush.So we had the generals here, Bush here, and Cheney in headphones up in a little sort of corner, like an angel up in the corner, and never saying anything, but constantly on the calls.
Abu Ghraib
Abu Ghraib in April of '04, happens, and the pictures come out.And again, it's very damaging, to say the least.Talk a little bit about Abu Ghraib as a turning point, how it affected things on the ground.
I think Abu Ghraib was very shocking.The pictures certainly were absolutely devastating here in the United Kingdom and across Europe in changing attitudes to people about the way that the counterinsurgency was being conducted.But I think, in a way, the more important issue is the way that things were done in the prisons altogether.If you look now, the current leadership of ISIS in Mesopotamia, if you look at the initial insurgency, what we effectively did was we radicalized a whole section of people who are still carrying on the fight through ISIS. And it was just a terrible thing to do.
We put them together in Camp Bucca and places like that.And it wasn't even so much the abuse, although that was obviously important.It was also, we actually put them together and allowed them to plan and plot and come up with this.We humiliated them at the same time.So it was a terrible tactical mistake.The PR mistake you felt straightaway.The actual substantive mistake we're still feeling the consequences of.
And the long-term damage to the way America was viewed by the rest of the world, as far as our moral values?
Yeah, as you said, there are a series of steps that undermine people's attitude towards the United States as a state built around an idea.You know, we're all built around populations that have been here forever.We're nation-states.The United States is a state built around an idea, and that's why it was so inspiring to so many of us.To then see that idea degraded by what happened first with Guantanamo, then in Abu Ghraib, and then in later steps, and later things that were discovered about interrogation and torture, that had a really bad impact on the United States' image around the world, yes.
So summing up the Bush years here, talk a little bit about the legacy of the Bush wars.I mean, one of the things you said during the Iraq inquiry over in the U.K. was that it would probably take 10 to 15 years to say, you know, the consequences, whether this was a success or not.So I guess those years have passed now.What do you think is the legacy of the Bush wars and sort of your overview of the Bush years?
I think clearly, the war in Iraq has been very, very damaging for Iraq.Now, of course, the problem is, you have to look at the counterfactual.What would have happened if we hadn't done anything and Saddam was still in power?That would have been pretty catastrophic as well for different reasons.But there's no doubt that the outcome of what we did in Iraq was not what we wanted.It led to this anarchy.It's led to a schism that was already there, but expanded between Shia and Sunni.It's led to greater Iranian influence on this, and Iranian influence spreading across the region.So I don't think anyone can claim that the war in Iraq was a great success.
On Afghanistan, I think we might take a slightly more nuanced opinion on that.The problem, really, in Afghanistan, is more our lack of staying power, I think.Having continued to work in Afghanistan since I left government, I think Afghanistan did need help in building institutions, and we never really did that.We kind of fought their war for them, rather than actually building Afghan institutions, which is what we should have been engaged in doing.
So I would distinguish between the two different wars.I think that the Iraq War definitely didn't produce the outcome we wanted.The Afghanistan war maybe could have done, but probably wouldn't have done by the decisions we're making now to pull out.
And turning to Iraq from Afghanistan by the Bush administration, the consequences of that?
I do think that's a bit exaggerated.I mean, so having the "good war" and the "bad war" I think is just a mistaken way of thinking about it.The United States is a huge superpower.It can fight two wars at once if it chooses to.And there's no particular reason why the war in Afghanistan should have lost because the war in Iraq gained.So I'm not sure that was the problem.But I think in terms of undermining the United States the way the United States was seen around the world was the problem, because the Afghan war did have overwhelming support.Everyone around the world was in support of the war in Afghanistan.They were not on Iraq.And pressing ahead with a war where you have very limited international support and fractured domestic support is a problem, as you saw in Vietnam.And that's then colored the attitude towards the Afghan war.So I would distinguish between them.The problem with the Iraq War was not that it was distracted by military resources; it is that it's colored the way the world saw the United States' role.
The Obama Years
So let's talk about the Obama years.He comes in, and soon after becoming president, he's awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.What was it that the world expected from Obama?
There were huge expectations of Obama when he came in.This was seen as a huge, like a stone being lifted off the backs of the rest of the world They expected him to revert to the United States that they had known but also to be a fresh face, to make a real drive to bring about peace in the Middle East, to remedy what had been done in Iraq and Afghanistan.So the expectations didn't just lie with the Nobel Peace Committee; it lay with public opinion right across Europe and more widely in the world.
So he comes in, and let's talk about Afghanistan for a second.He sees it, of course, as the good war.During the campaign he defines the "bad war" and the "good war."Does he underestimate what it will take to build this democracy that we've already been talking about, and to win this war?
I'm not sure that was so much the problem as going for contradictory objectives, that there's a problem in fighting wars, that you have to be pretty clear about what you're doing.You're going for victory, or you're pulling out, or you are going for a peace agreement.If you announce that you're going to increase your forces and you're going to fight, but only for a limited period of time and then you're leaving, you're sending two very different messages to the people you're fighting.You're saying, “We're going to really come after you now.But we're then going to go.” And what do you do if you're the Taliban in those circumstances?You start thinking, well, we'll just hunker down.We'll survive this onslaught, and then we'll be able to take over.That's fine.
And that's—that's the problem.If you send those contradictory messages, and that's slightly Obama's thing, because he likes to come to compromise proposals.He listens to both sides.And instead of going—you know, George Bush, whatever his faults, was quite clear about what he was doing.He would go in one direction, not in two directions at once.And the trouble with Obama's more cerebral approach is you ended up with two contradictory approaches being molded together, with pretty bad consequences.
Some people have told us that what happened was that after the initial surge and feeling that it did not accomplish what was necessary, he ended up, as one person said, mowing the lawn, that he kept it going in hopes that the Afghani [sic] forces would eventually be able to take over, and over time, there would be a solution.How did London view it?How do you think that the U.K. viewed those decisions?
Well, there's a reason we cut our lawns, because you want to keep the lawn under control.And there is a case for keeping the situation under control in Afghanistan, genuinely building up the Afghan forces… But it took a very long time to build the Afghan forces to a state where they were capable of combating the threat from the Taliban and from other groups.So I think actually, from the point of view of London, mowing the lawn was a fairly sensible policy.We weren't going to be doing very much of the mowing, because we didn't have a big enough mower, but we could leave it to the United States to do that.
So I don't think there was much opposition to carrying on with that policy.I think the thing that probably frightened people in London was the announcement that they would then quit.After having tried to announce in advance you're going to quit, after trying the surge, was probably what alarmed people here.
He embraces drones and targeted killings as, I guess, a cleaner, more pinpoint way to try to defeat Al Qaeda.How did the allies view this turn and his decision to use drones in a considerably much larger fashion than what the Bush administration was doing, and this idea that this was a potential solution to the problem?
Well, there are moral consequences of trying to fight distant wars in this way, where you have people sitting in Las Vegas killing people in Afghanistan.That raises some pretty big moral questions.But I think the people in Europe would understand that, technologically, if you can protect your own soldiers so you're not sacrificing lives in order to win in a different way, using that technology, just as in the Second World War with Japan, where they used nuclear weapons in order to avoid losing hundreds of thousands of more American lives, or with the bombing that Britain did in Germany in order to avoid losing lives, or the failure to advance towards Berlin and letting the Russians take it over because you wanted to lose less lives, was pretty understandable.
So I don't think there was that much questioning of the use of drones.
You'll find a group of people who would be opposed to it, that's for sure, but I think most people would say, “Well, we understand why they're trying to save American lives and use technology to do so.”
… It seemed that each administration came along and eventually came to that point of view.And then were attempts to talk, but it never worked. Why?
Partly it's very difficult to engage with the Taliban.They're actually, as is being demonstrated at the moment, actually negotiating with them is a very hard thing to do.They're not traditional negotiating partners.But I think it was, for understandable reasons—for example, Hillary Clinton was very concerned about their attitude on—for the right reasons, on women's rights, girls' rights, and therefore was opposed to engaging with them, and therefore vetoed any chance to negotiate, something that others in State were keen to do.
So I think there are good reasons why people don't want to engage.But what we've discovered, in our own conflict in Northern Ireland but also in conflicts elsewhere in the world, you do need to engage if you're actually going to solve the problem.You can't just beat them militarily.And we're going to find the same thing with ISIS in Iraq and Syria.If you just keep hammering them, you take territory away, that's very good, but you're not actually going to solve the problem unless you find some way of engaging with the issue, the political issue at the core of it.
The Rise of ISIS
In Iraq, Obama disengages militarily and politically, leaving a power vacuum.Talk a little bit about leading, of course, to the rise of ISIS, talk a little bit about those decisions by the Obama administration and how you viewed it after seeing so much face-to-face.
Well, I thought it was a mistake.I understood why Obama would want to end what he regarded as the bad war, to get Americans home, get Americans safe.And why should Americans stay fighting for such a long period of time?But I think the consequences were always going to be bad.They turned out to be even worse than most people had thought.But they were never going to be good.And I always was of the view that Americans would have to go back in again.They couldn't stay out because of what had started.
And that is maybe the essential problem.We don't have the patience anymore to stay with these wars.I know they're never-ending wars.I know they're the longest wars America has ever fought.However, if you're going to go into these places intending not just to kick out the dictator but to create something new and better for the people there, you have to have some staying power.You have to remain until they have institutions that can look after themselves.And I think if you talk about something different like Libya, you see the problem.If you go in just very high level, bomb and leave, you end up with a mess as well.
Did we ever understand who the enemy was or what made them tick?And is that one of the problems, that now we've been through two administrations that we never quite understood who we were fighting and what motivated them?
I think the problem was, we were trying to fight two different enemies at once, and that made us a bit confused.We were trying to fight Iran and the Shia militias that they backed, who killed a great many British soldiers.And then we were trying to fight Sunni radicals.And the Sunni radicals, in particular, as many terrorists realized, that if they could attack and kill Shia, they would start a conflict inside the country that we would not be able to contain.So I don't think it was so much we didn't understand them as we didn't have a way of dealing with them.And we got confused by the—the two different enemies we were trying to deal with simultaneously.
So we end up basically in the middle of a religious war, almost.
Yeah.We end up in the middle of a war between two traditions, two sects, trying to fight a war for power, while we've lifted the lid on something we find very difficult to gain control of.
And finalizing the Obama years, how would you look back at the legacy of Obama's war, as he attempts to disengage America from this 9/11 era?
Well, I think his intentions were very good.He was trying to do the right thing.But there are some realities that got in his way.And in particular, in Afghanistan, I think he probably made things worse rather than better, by the combination of the surge and saying they were going to get out.I think that actually laid the seeds for where we are now in Afghanistan.In Iraq, it was far more understandable.But just as there are unintended consequences of invading a country like Iraq, there are also unintended consequences of pulling out precipitously without thinking through what the consequences will be of that.And that's what I think we ended up with.
The Trump Years
So Donald Trump—I mean, the other interesting thing is, each of these presidents, certainly Obama, certainly Trump, were elected because of the 9/11 legacy of the past president.He becomes the new president.He has a new philosophy of America First.How does that translate to the Europeans, to America's allies?
Well, it was scary to have someone like this become president of the United States.Was not something we'd expected, not something we were prepared for.And his foreign policy consequences were quite serious, because if it was really the intention of the United States to withdraw, to become an isolationist power and focus entirely on its own domestic interests and not on the interests of the rest of the world, that was going to leave a great big vacuum in the world that no one else was in the position to fill.So I think it was pretty scary.
… And talk a little bit, if you can, about this mistrust of the allies that he sort of defined constantly, of democratic institutions as well.How was that viewed in the U.K.?
Well, the U.K. depends so much on the transatlantic relationship, particularly now that we've left Europe, and then were in the process of leaving Europe, that it really mattered to us, keeping the alliance together with the United States.So for us, it was an extremely alarming prospect that Trump was going to actually have different values from us, be defending something completely different than we in the U.K. and people elsewhere in Europe were going to be defending.And this Atlantic was going to get a whole lot wider.That left us, as the U.K., very exposed, and was very frightening.
And his legacy, if you look back at how he dealt with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, he was also unable to disengage as he had intended to, and he sold in the campaigns.So give us your overview of the way he handled the wars.
Well, his aim, and indeed his promise, was to get American troops back, to remove them.I don't think anyone quite believed that he would really do that in Europe.And when he did do so, or tried to do so in Iraq, he caused himself some problems in his own administration, not just with allies, and in fact, had to leave forces there, who are still there, thank goodness.In Afghanistan, I think it was a more important impact and more problematic.Again, it's totally understandable why the United States should not want to fight a forever war and constantly have their soldiers on the ground, losing their lives and spending huge amounts of money in Afghanistan.
But to cut and run, a bit like Vietnam, was—undermined an awful lot of things that had been achieved since 2001.So instructing an agreement to be reached with the Taliban and the American government, leaving out the Afghan government, and then to press ahead implementing it, as if they were equal, the Taliban and the Afghan government as bad as each other.And then, at the end, to say, "Right, we're just going to pull out totally," again, he wasn't able to do it.The American military insisted on keeping residual forces there, basically undermines the American influence in Afghanistan. …
… Talk a little bit about how the world views what happened on Jan. 6, and the attack of the Capitol building by Trump supporters, and the context of 9/11, and how 20 years of decisions made by presidents of both parties affected it.How did we get here? …
I think for people in Britain and people in Europe more generally, the attack on the Capitol was horrifying.The shining city on the hill, the paragon of democracy being attacked in that way was almost incomprehensible.And people watched with horrified fascination the film as it unfolded.It's one of those moments that had a very defining impact.I'm not sure many people here would have blamed it on 9/11 or blamed it on the war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan.We saw it principally as about Trump, about introducing lies into politics and then egging people on.It's something that we have seen in Europe, in our history, to our shame and to our great danger.And we saw it much more in that context, of the impact of populism and frustrated populism, trying to get political results by violence rather than by democracy.
Now, there is a bigger thing that's happened to politics over the last 20—populism didn't come from nowhere.It built on people's discontent with their representatives.That probably has more to do here in the U.K. and in the U.S. with economic factors, with people's stagnant wages, with the rise of the super rich and issues like that rather than perhaps foreign policy.Certainly in the U.K. that would be true.
What Biden Inherits
President Biden said that the world viewed this attack on Jan. 6 as proof our democracy is in trouble.Your view?
I think it certainly was evident of a real problem in American democracy.The good news about American democracy is, as seen from outside, you have this ability to heal yourselves.Had Trump been there for two terms, I think some things could have changed in a way that would have been irreparable.You could never have gone back.My belief is, my hope is, that it was only one term.People were shocked by what happened and have gone back.And I think that American democracy will cure itself, will heal itself.And actually, the advent of President Biden demonstrates that's the case.
When Biden becomes president, what is the America that he inherits?Is it a weaker country today than before 9/11, as it's deemed by the world?
Yes, there's no doubt the United States is in a period of decline, as seen globally.You know, after the first Gulf War, after the end of the Cold War, United States under George Bush Sr. was in a remarkable position.It was the hegemony.Now it isn't.But that's not just to do with what happened in the war against terror.That's to do with the rise of China; it's to do with the world growing in different ways, as you'd expect.And it's not even necessarily a bad thing.
But the United States' ability to offer world leadership is much diminished by what's happened.And Biden, in saying that America is back, is a very reassuring presence to allies in the U.K. and Europe and elsewhere.But it's not back everywhere.It's not back in the way it would have been in '91 or '92.It's back in places it chooses.It's back doing JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] with Iran.It's back doing a bit in Yemen.But it's not back in Syria.And it's leaving Afghanistan.So America is not back to where it was.It is, thank goodness, back engaged.But I guess it's never going to be back in the old America we knew.
And the way that people in the world viewed America, is U.S. power more the values—and by what has taken place, is there a new world order today?
I feel there isn't a world order.In fact, there very rarely is, if you look back at the history of the world, the world order.So there's a different configuration of powers and relations between the powers.And some of America's ability to inspire has gone.But I still don't see many people wanting to live the way the Chinese live or the way the Russians live, or even the way the Islamists live.Most people still want to live the way Americans do.So the soft power of America—the power to inspire—is still there.It is tarnished, but it's still there.And it's still incredibly important to the rest of the world.
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