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My story is a little bit about war.

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It's about disillusionment.

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It's about death.

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And it's about rediscovering

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idealism

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in all of that wreckage.

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And perhaps also, there's a lesson

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about how to deal with

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our screwed-up, fragmenting

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and dangerous world of the 21st century.

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I don't believe in straightforward narratives.

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I don't believe in a life or history

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written as decision "A" led to consequence "B"

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led to consequence "C" --

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these neat narratives that we're presented with,

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and that perhaps we encourage in each other.

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I believe in randomness,

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and one of the reasons I believe that

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is because me becoming a diplomat was random.

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I'm colorblind.

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I was born unable to see most colors.

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This is why I wear gray and black most of the time,

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and I have to take my wife with me

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to chose clothes.

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And I'd always wanted to be a fighter pilot when I was a boy.

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I loved watching planes barrel over

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our holiday home in the countryside.

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And it was my boyhood dream to be a fighter pilot.

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And I did the tests in the Royal Air Force to become a pilot,

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and sure enough, I failed.

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I couldn't see all the blinking different lights,

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and I can't distinguish color.

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So I had to choose another career,

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and this was in fact relatively easy for me,

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because I had an abiding passion all the way through my childhood,

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which was international relations.

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As a child,

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I read the newspaper thoroughly.

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I was fascinated by the Cold War,

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by the INF negotiations

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over intermediate-range nuclear missiles,

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the proxy war between the Soviet Union and the U.S.

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in Angola or Afghanistan.

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These things really interested me.

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And so I decided quite at an early age

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I wanted to be a diplomat.

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And I, one day, I announced this to my parents --

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and my father denies this story to this day --

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I said, "Daddy, I want to be a diplomat."

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And he turned to me, and he said,

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"Carne, you have to be very clever to be a diplomat."

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(Laughter)

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And my ambition was sealed.

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In 1989,

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I entered the British Foreign Service.

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That year, 5,000 people applied to become a diplomat,

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and 20 of us succeeded.

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And as those numbers suggest,

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I was inducted into an elite

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and fascinating and exhilarating world.

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Being a diplomat, then and now,

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is an incredible job, and I loved every minute of it --

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I enjoyed the status of it.

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I bought myself a nice suit and wore leather-soled shoes

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and reveled in

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this amazing access I had to world events.

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I traveled to the Gaza Strip.

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I headed the Middle East Peace Process section

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in the British Foreign Ministry.

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I became a speechwriter

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for the British Foreign Secretary.

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I met Yasser Arafat.

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I negotiated

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with Saddam's diplomats at the U.N.

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Later, I traveled to Kabul

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and served in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban.

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And I would travel

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in a C-130 transport

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and go and visit warlords

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in mountain hideaways

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and negotiate with them

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about how we were going to eradicate Al Qaeda from Afghanistan,

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surrounded by my Special Forces escort,

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who, themselves, had to have an escort of a platoon of Royal Marines,

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because it was so dangerous.

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And that was exciting -- that was fun.

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It was really interesting.

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And it's a great cadre of people,

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incredibly close-knit community of people.

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And the pinnacle of my career, as it turned out,

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was when I was posted to New York.

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I'd already served in Germany, Norway,

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various other places,

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but I was posted to New York

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to serve on the U.N. Security Council for the British delegation.

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And my responsibility was the Middle East,

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which was my specialty.

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And there, I dealt with things

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like the Middle East peace process,

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the Lockerbie issue --

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we can talk about that later, if you wish --

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but above all, my responsibility was Iraq

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and its weapons of mass destruction

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and the sanctions we placed on Iraq

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to oblige it to disarm itself of these weapons.

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I was the chief British negotiator

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on the subject,

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and I was steeped in the issue.

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And anyway,

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my tour -- it was kind of a very exciting time.

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I mean it was very dramatic diplomacy.

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We went through several wars

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during my time in New York.

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I negotiated for my country

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the resolution in the Security Council

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of the 12th of September 2001

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condemning the attacks of the day before,

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which were, of course, deeply present to us

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actually living in New York at the time.

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So it was kind of the best of time, worst of times

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kind of experience.

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I lived the high-life.

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Although I worked very long hours,

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I lived in a penthouse in Union Square.

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I was a single British diplomat in New York City;

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you can imagine what that might have meant.

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(Laughter)

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I had a good time.

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But in 2002,

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when my tour came to an end,

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I decided I wasn't going to go back

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to the job that was waiting for me in London.

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I decided to take a sabbatical,

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in fact, at the New School, Bruce.

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In some inchoate, inarticulate way

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I realized that there was something wrong

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with my work, with me.

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I was exhausted,

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and I was also disillusioned

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in a way I couldn't quite put my finger on.

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And I decided to take some time out from work.

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The Foreign Office was very generous.

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You could take these special unpaid leave, as they called them,

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and yet remain part of the diplomatic service, but not actually do any work.

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It was nice.

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And eventually, I decided

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to take a secondment to join the U.N. in Kosovo,

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which was then under U.N. administration.

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And two things happened in Kosovo,

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which kind of, again,

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shows the randomness of life,

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because these things turned out to be

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two of the pivots of my life

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and helped to deliver me to the next stage.

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But they were random things.

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One was that, in the summer of 2004,

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the British government, somewhat reluctantly,

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decided to have an official inquiry

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into the use of intelligence on WMD

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in the run up to the Iraq War,

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a very limited subject.

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And I testified to that inquiry in secret.

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I had been steeped in the intelligence on Iraq

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and its WMD,

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and my testimony to the inquiry said three things:

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that the government exaggerated the intelligence,

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which was very clear in all the years I'd read it.

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And indeed, our own internal assessment was very clear

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that Iraq's WMD

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did not pose a threat to its neighbors, let alone to us.

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Secondly, the government had ignored all available alternatives to war,

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which in some ways

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was a more discreditable thing still.

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The third reason, I won't go into.

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But anyway, I gave that testimony,

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and that presented me with a crisis.

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What was I going to do?

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This testimony was deeply critical of my colleagues,

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of my ministers, who had, in my view

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had perpetrated a war on a falsehood.

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And so I was in crisis.

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And this wasn't a pretty thing.

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I moaned about it, I hesitated,

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I went on and on and on to my long-suffering wife,

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and eventually I decided to resign from the British Foreign Service.

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I felt -- there's a scene in the Al Pacino movie "The Insider," which you may know,

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where he goes back to CBS

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after they've let him down over the tobacco guy,

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and he goes, "You know, I just can't do this anymore. Something's broken."

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And it was like that for me. I love that movie.

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I felt just something's broken.

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I can't actually sit with my foreign minister

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or my prime minister again with a smile on my face

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and do what I used to do gladly for them.

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So took a running leap

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and jumped over the edge of a cliff.

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And it was a very, very uncomfortable, unpleasant feeling.

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And I started to fall.

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And today, that fall hasn't stopped;

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I'm still falling.

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But, in a way, I've got used to the sensation of it.

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And in a way, I kind of like

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the sensation of it a lot better

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than I like actually standing on top of the cliff,

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wondering what to do.

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A second thing happened in Kosovo,

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which kind of -- I need a quick gulp of water, forgive me.

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A second thing happened in Kosovo,

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which kind of delivered the answer,

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which I couldn't really answer,

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which is, "What do I do with my life?"

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I love diplomacy --

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I have no career --

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I expected my entire life to be a diplomat, to be serving my country.

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I wanted to be an ambassador,

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and my mentors, my heroes,

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people who got to the top of my profession,

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and here I was throwing it all away.

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A lot of my friends were still in it.

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My pension was in it.

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And I gave it up.

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And what was I going to do?

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And that year, in Kosovo,

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this terrible, terrible thing happened, which I saw.

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In March 2004, there were terrible riots

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all over the province -- as it then was -- of Kosovo.

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18 people were killed.

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It was anarchy.

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And it's a very horrible thing to see anarchy,

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to know that the police and the military --

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there were lots of military troops there --

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actually can't stop that rampaging mob

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who's coming down the street.

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And the only way that rampaging mob coming down the street will stop

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is when they decide to stop

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and when they've had enough burning and killing.

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And that is not a very nice feeling to see, and I saw it.

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And I went through it. I went through those mobs.

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And with my Albanian friends, we tried to stop it, but we failed.

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And that riot taught me something,

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which isn't immediately obvious and it's kind of a complicated story.

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But one of the reasons that riot took place --

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those riots, which went on for several days, took place --

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was because the Kosovo people

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were disenfranchised from their own future.

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There were diplomatic negotiations about the future of Kosovo

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going on then,

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and the Kosovo government, let alone the Kosovo people,

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were not actually

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participating in those talks.

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There was this whole fancy diplomatic system,

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this negotiation process about the future of Kosovo,

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and the Kosovars weren't part of it.

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And funnily enough, they were frustrated about that.

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Those riots were part of the manifestation of that frustration.

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It wasn't the only reason,

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and life is not simple, one reason narratives.

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It was a complicated thing,

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and I'm not pretending it was more simple than it was.

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But that was one of the reasons.

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And that kind of gave me the inspiration --

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or rather to be precise,

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it gave my wife the inspiration.

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She said, "Why don't you advise the Kosovars?

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Why don't you advise their government on their diplomacy?"

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And the Kosovars were not allowed a diplomatic service.

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They were not allowed diplomats.

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They were not allowed a foreign office

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to help them deal with this immensely complicated process,

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which became known as the Final Status Process of Kosovo.

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And so that was the idea.

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That was the origin of the thing that became Independent Diplomat,

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the world's first diplomatic advisory group

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and a non-profit to boot.

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And it began when I flew back from London

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after my time at the U.N. in Kosovo.

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I flew back and had dinner with the Kosovo prime minister and said to him,

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"Look, I'm proposing that I come and advise you on the diplomacy.

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I know this stuff. It's what I do. Why don't I come and help you?"

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And he raised his glass of raki to me and said,

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"Yes, Carne. Come."

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And I came to Kosovo

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and advised the Kosovo government.

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Independent Diplomat ended up advising three successive Kosovo prime ministers

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and the multi-party negotiation team of Kosovo.

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And Kosovo became independent.

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Independent Diplomat is now established

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in five diplomatic centers around the world,

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and we're advising seven or eight

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different countries, or political groups,

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depending on how you wish to define them --

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and I'm not big on definitions.

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We're advising the Northern Cypriots on how to reunify their island.

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We're advising the Burmese opposition,

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the government of Southern Sudan,

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which -- you heard it here first --

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is going to be a new country within the next few years.

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We're advising the Polisario Front of the Western Sahara,

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who are fighting to get their country back

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from Moroccan occupation

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after 34 years of dispossession.

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We're advising various island states in the climate change negotiations,

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which is suppose to culminate

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in Copenhagen.

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There's a bit of randomness here too

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because, when I was beginning Independent Diplomat,

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I went to a party in the House of Lords,

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which is a ridiculous place,

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but I was holding my drink like this, and I bumped into

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this guy who was standing behind me.

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And we started talking, and he said --

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I told him what I was doing,

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and I told him rather grandly

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I was going to establish Independent Diplomat in New York.

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At that time there was just me --

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and me and my wife were moving back to New York.

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And he said, "Why don't you see my colleagues in New York?"

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And it turned out

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he worked for an innovation company called ?What If!,

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which some of you have probably heard of.

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And one thing led to another,

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and I ended up having a desk

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in ?What If! in New York,

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when I started Independent Diplomat.

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And watching ?What If!

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develop new flavors of chewing gum for Wrigley

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or new flavors for Coke

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actually helped me innovate

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new strategies for the Kosovars

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and for the Saharawis of the Western Sahara.

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And I began to realize that there are different ways of doing diplomacy --

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that diplomacy, like business,

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is a business of solving problems,

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and yet the word innovation doesn't exist in diplomacy;

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it's all zero sum games and realpolitik

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and ancient institutions that have been there for generations

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and do things the same way they've always done things.

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And Independent Diplomat, today,

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tries to incorporate some of the things I learned at ?What If!.

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We all sit in one office and shout at each other across the office.

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We all work on little laptops and try to move desks to change the way we think.

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And we use naive experts

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who may know nothing about the countries we're dealing with,

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but may know something about something else

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to try to inject new thinking

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into the problems

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that we try to address for our clients.

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It's not easy, because our clients, by definition,

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are having a difficult time, diplomatically.

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There are, I don't know,

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some lessons from all of this,

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personal and political --

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and in a way, they're the same thing.

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The personal one

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is falling off a cliff

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is actually a good thing, and I recommend it.

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And it's a good thing to do at least once in your life

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just to tear everything up and jump.

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The second thing is a bigger lesson about the world today.

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Independent Diplomat is part of a trend

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which is emerging and evident across the world,

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which is that the world is fragmenting.

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States mean less than they used to,

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and the power of the state is declining.

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That means the power of others things is rising.

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Those other things are called non-state actors.

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They may be corporations,

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they may be mafiosi, they may be nice NGOs,

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they may anything,

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any number of things.

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We are living in a more complicated and fragmented world.

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If governments are less able

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to affect the problems

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that affect us in the world,

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then that means, who is left to deal with them,

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who has to take greater responsibility to deal with them?

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Us.

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If they can't do it, who's left to deal with it?

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We have no choice but to embrace that reality.

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What this means is

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it's no longer good enough

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to say that international relations, or global affairs,

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or chaos in Somalia,

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or what's going on in Burma is none of your business,

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and that you can leave it to governments to get on with.

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I can connect any one of you

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by six degrees of separation

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to the Al-Shabaab militia in Somalia.

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Ask me how later, particularly if you eat fish, interestingly enough,

390
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but that connection is there.

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We are all intimately connected.

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And this isn't just Tom Friedman,

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it's actually provable in case after case after case.

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What that means is, instead of asking your politicians to do things,

395
00:16:06,000 --> 00:16:09,000
you have to look to yourself to do things.

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00:16:09,000 --> 00:16:11,000
And Independent Diplomat is a kind of example of this

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in a sort of loose way.

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There aren't neat examples, but one example is this:

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the way the world is changing

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is embodied in what's going on at the place I used to work --

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the U.N. Security Council.

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The U.N. was established in 1945.

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Its charter is basically designed

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to stop conflicts between states --

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interstate conflict.

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Today, 80 percent of the agenda

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00:16:33,000 --> 00:16:35,000
of the U.N. Security Council

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is about conflicts within states,

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involving non-state parties --

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guerillas, separatists,

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terrorists, if you want to call them that,

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people who are not normal governments, who are not normal states.

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That is the state of the world today.

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When I realized this,

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and when I look back on my time at the Security Council

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and what happened with the Kosovars,

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and I realize that often

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the people who were most directly affected

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by what we were doing in the Security Council

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weren't actually there, weren't actually invited

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to give their views to the Security Council,

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I thought, this is wrong.

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Something's got to be done about this.

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So I started off in a traditional mode.

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Me and my colleagues at Independent Diplomat

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went around the U.N. Security Council.

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We went around 70 U.N. member states --

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the Kazaks, the Ethiopians, the Israelis --

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00:17:21,000 --> 00:17:23,000
you name them, we went to see them --

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the secretary general, all of them,

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and said, "This is all wrong.

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This is terrible that you don't consult these people who are actually affected.

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You've got to institutionalize a system

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where you actually invite the Kosovars

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to come and tell you what they think.

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00:17:35,000 --> 00:17:37,000
This will allow you to tell me -- you can tell them what you think.

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00:17:37,000 --> 00:17:39,000
It'll be great. You can have an exchange.

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00:17:39,000 --> 00:17:42,000
You can actually incorporate these people's views into your decisions,

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00:17:42,000 --> 00:17:44,000
which means your decisions will be more effective and durable."

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Super-logical, you would think.

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I mean, incredibly logical. So obvious, anybody could get it.

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And of course, everybody got it. Everybody went, "Yes, of course, you're absolutely right.

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Come back to us

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in maybe six months."

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And of course, nothing happened -- nobody did anything.

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The Security Council does its business

447
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in exactly the same way today

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00:18:05,000 --> 00:18:08,000
that it did X number of years ago,

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when I was there 10 years ago.

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So we looked at that observation

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of basically failure

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and thought, what can we do about it.

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And I thought, I'm buggered

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if I'm going to spend the rest of my life

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lobbying for these crummy governments

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to do what needs to be done.

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So what we're going to do

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is we're actually going to set up these meetings ourselves.

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So now, Independent Diplomat

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is in the process of setting up meetings

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between the U.N. Security Council

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and the parties to the disputes

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that are on the agenda of the Security Council.

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So we will be bringing

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Darfuri rebel groups,

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the Northern Cypriots and the Southern Cypriots,

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rebels from Aceh,

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and awful long laundry list

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of chaotic conflicts around the world.

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And we will be trying to bring the parties to New York

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to sit down in a quiet room

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in a private setting with no press

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and actually explain what they want

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to the members of the U. N. Security Council,

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and for the members of the U.N. Security Council

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to explain to them what they want.

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So there's actually a conversation,

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which has never before happened.

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And of course, describing all this,

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any of you who know politics will think this is incredibly difficult,

481
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and I entirely agree with you.

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The chances of failure are very high,

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but it certainly won't happen

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00:19:29,000 --> 00:19:32,000
if we don't try to make it happen.

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And my politics has changed fundamentally

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from when I was a diplomat to what I am today,

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and I think that outputs is what matters, not process,

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not technology, frankly, so much either.

489
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Preach technology

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00:19:45,000 --> 00:19:48,000
to all the Twittering members of all the Iranian demonstrations

491
00:19:48,000 --> 00:19:51,000
who are now in political prison in Tehran,

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00:19:51,000 --> 00:19:53,000
where Ahmadinejad remains in power.

493
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Technology has not delivered political change in Iran.

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You've got to look at the outputs, and you got to say to yourself,

495
00:20:00,000 --> 00:20:02,000
"What can I do to produce that particular output?"

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00:20:02,000 --> 00:20:05,000
That is the politics of the 21st century,

497
00:20:05,000 --> 00:20:07,000
and in a way, Independent Diplomat

498
00:20:07,000 --> 00:20:10,000
embodies that fragmentation, that change,

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that is happening to all of us.

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That's my story. Thanks.