* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Alumni from our two week course ‘Economic and Political Reporting from Southeast Europe’ in London went to Brussels for two days to meet with various officials are now writing about their experiences.
Session with Jamie Patrick Shea, Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges Division, NATO
If Jamie Shea knows something for the best, it’s speaking. Self-confident and aware of the topics he presented, he opened with a joke:
The seventh husband of Elizabeth Taylor says on their wedding night, “I know what I have to do; I just don’t know how to make it interesting for you”.
But Shea was more than interesting for us, talking about a range of topics such as this year’s Chicago NATO Summit, the system of “smart” defence and the end, scheduled for 2014, of the mission in Afghanistan by the international military force ISAF. He also answered our questions the EU integration process of the Western Balkans and the role of NATO in current developments in the Arab world.
When Jamie Shea is in a room with 16 journalists it is just a regular day for the former spokesman of NATO, but for us it was a “fight” to get all our questions in and get the most from his answers. We didn't waste our time and asked him many biting questions.
Not only because all his words were blended with a unique sense of humour, but also because he had in front of him people who had recent memories of war scenes in the region, Jamie Shea was the most memorable interlocutor during our Brussels meetings. If more officials can talk like him, fewer conflicts will happen around the world, for sure.
