Politics

The cumulative impact of these legal instruments indicates, perhaps unsurprisingly, that initiating war is rarely, if ever, lawful. However, responding to acts of war can be justified.

Prosecutor of Slobodan Milošević at the International Criminal Tribunal

Historically, conflicts typically ended with the major players negotiating peace agreements, often including amnesties. The more brutal and involved in crimes a party was, the more significant their role at the negotiation table. This approach changed after the Second World War with the Nuremberg trials.

Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda

$1.8 trillion a year is spent subsidizing industries that harm us, predominantly fossil fuels. Redirecting a significant portion of these funds could dramatically accelerate our transition.

First Female President of Ireland & UN Human Rights Commissioner

A significant hurdle is the underestimation of our collective power. The fossil fuel sector and its substantial influence through lobbying and misinformation, spending $4 billion annually to challenge scientific consensus.

First Female President of Ireland & UN Human Rights Commissioner

There are various forms of hostage-taking, each with distinct characteristics. Broadly speaking, one can categorise them into political and criminal hostage-takings. Political hostage-taking involves abducting someone to gain a political leverage—this is the first type. The second type is criminal hostage-taking, where the motive is ransom.

Envoy Who Negotiated Release of Hostages in Lebanon During 1980s

Some foreign dictatorial regimes are bypassing traditional lobbying shops altogether and directly recruiting sitting members of Congress to act as foreign agents.

It's important to note that this isn't just limited to the regimes people often worry about—like Russia, China, Iran, or Venezuela. It's also happening with regimes that are nominal partners of the United States.

For years, one group of Americans has worked as foot-soldiers for the most authoritarian regimes around the planet. In the process, they've not only entrenched dictatorships and spread kleptocratic networks, but they've secretly guided U.S. policy without the rest of America even being aware.

What we're seeing is a broad constellation of nominally independent subsets, even entire industries, that have now come under the umbrella of the foreign lobbying industry. All of these entities have been transformed into go-to vehicles and mouthpieces for foreign regimes.

There's this sense that our institutions have failed us. The very rich generally pay lower effective tax rates than middle-class and lower-income individuals. There's a sense that the system is broken, the rules of the game are rigged.

There are three devils that inhibit economic growth. The first is that the government takes up too much of the economy. The second is that taxes take too much out of the economy. And the third is that there's too much regulation.

However much we would like to pursue a 'be kind' policy, we have to recognize that there are others in the world who are going to eat our lunch if we don't do our best.

Nobody ever has control of all of the levers, and nobody ever has complete information. But also, there's always the day after. When dealing with really difficult issues it's very easy to get stuck in the moment and to lose sight of where we do want to be five or ten years from now.

I am never again going to accept a box of Ferrero Rocher from anyone. We need to do away with the idea of what diplomats do and how they work. Being diplomatic in the sense of not really saying what you mean or softening the message—it's been absolutely essential to be clear and precise.

When you're trying to understand the motivations of people, quite often understanding the emotional drivers is at least as important as understanding the facts that took them there. In the case of Putin and the people around him, it's resentment and it's anger and it's determination to recover something they believe they lost.

History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, the second as a farce. I think one of the things I have learned with history is that it's important to study it, but it will rarely give you the right answer. Quite often because there is no right answer, and what you're really looking for is to understand how you got here.