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Jonathan Power became TFF Associate in 1991. Jonathan Power is a foreign affairs columnist, film maker and author. For 17 years his column ran weekly in the International Herald Tribune. His BBC documentary film, “It’s Ours Whatever They Say”, won the silver medal at the Venice Film Festival. His last book “Conundrums of Humanity – […]

By Jonathan Power November 8th 2016. An interesting question is what would happen to American foreign policy if President Barack Obama were allowed to have another four year term in office? It would be a less interventionist presidency than what is about to become. This is not to say that I think the way Obama […]

By Jonathan Power Why do major powers arise? At a time when we talk about the rise of China and India, the said weakening of the US and the European Union, and the thwarted ambitions of Russia, it is a good time to ponder this question. Between 1492 and 1914 the Europeans conquered 84% of […]

By Jonathan Power In 1978 Deng Xiaoping, architect of China’s economic miracle, said the intractable problems of which country owns what in the East and South China Seas should be left to the next generation. He was right. China should keep kicking that can of worms down the road. The recent surprise declaration that a […]

By Jonathan Power Observers say that what drives President Vladimir Putin is to make Russia respected. But perhaps Putin overestimates how much power Russia already has. He has overlooked which trumpets to blow – it is not his “hang tough” policies in international affairs, especially vis-a-vis the United States. It is Russia’s culture. These thoughts […]

                        By Jonathan Power December 26th 2017 Every so often reports emerge that attempt to measure which are the best countries to live in. The Nordic countries plus New Zealand, Holland and Switzerland, usually come out top. Sweden is number one just for the […]

By Jonathan Power December 19th. 2017 The nuclear weapon missile business is contradictory, full of missteps, highly dangerous and prepared in its madness (Mutually Assured Destruction, aka MAD, they used to call it in Cold War days) to plunge the world into a nuclear war that will reduce most of the world to dust. A […]

By Jonathan Power Poets as diverse as William Blake and Yehuda Amichai have sung the praises of the heavenly Jerusalem, a land without strife or rancour, war or bitterness, envy, acquisitiveness or hatred. Until last week and President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s de facto capital, Israel, Fatah, Hamas and their common […]

By Jonathan Power Timing is everything. Dear Reader you’re right. If I was going to write on the conviction in a UN court of General Ratko Mladic I should have done it last week when the court sentenced him to life imprisonment for the mass murder of a significant part of Bosnia’s Muslim population during […]

By Jonathan Power November 14th 2017 When Donald Trump stretched his hand across our television screens on Sunday to shake the hand of the Philippines’ president, Rodrigo Duterte, and then said he had “a great relationship” with him I felt my gorge contracting. Having tasted the great, if sometimes flawed, (remember the totally counterproductive policy […]