Americans have long felt that NATO isn't doing its job and that the Europeans aren't contributing enough. Trump has accelerated the decline in Atlantic solidarity by offering open contempt for NATO allies as well. The future of NATO now very much depends on Europeans. Can you begin to identify security threats, prepare yourselves and arm yourselves without the US?

Putin saw the Ukrainian revolution as a challenge to him personally, and I think that's why he, in fact, over-reacted. I think his occupation of Crimea and then annexation for him was actually a mistake from Russia's point of view. And then his invasion of Eastern Ukraine was also a mistake. He imagined that he would invade Eastern Ukraine and then eventually split the country in half, and he discovered that in fact, Russian-speaking Ukrainians are not Russians, and they didn't support him.

The evolution of a bourgeoisie is a healthy phenomenon when it grows and prospers thanks to bourgeois values: hard work, honesty, personal responsibility.

Though the poorest Americans voted for Hillary Clinton, many relatively wealthy people voted for Trump and generally it's a mistake to think that economics explains Trump. The US is doing relatively well, the economy has significantly recovered since 2008, unemployment rates are low. I would say rather that his appeal to the working class was cultural: "I'll bring back the kinds of jobs your fathers had," and, by implication, the whiter, simpler post-war world when America had no real economic competition.

The surge in right-wing populism and the phenomenon of Trump are related. You can think of them together as the same problem.

Steve Bannon, the White House chief strategist, appears to imagine an alliance between Trump, Le Pen, Geert Wilders and Nigel Farage. Call it the populist international, a fraternal association of the nationalist right, binding people who want borders, across borders.

The Russian economy is about the size of the Italian economy; it's very small, and Russia's military force is larger than it was, because Putin's been investing in it, but it still doesn't compare to that of the United States, and his reach and aim still don't compare.