Globalization has genuinely drained power away from national politicians and people feel it. People in our fast digital age are also frustrated with the comparably slow democratic processes. Many young people - and some old people - want to know, Why does everything take so long? Why can't someone just decide and then move forward?

nothing happens in August - except when something really happens in August. World War I began in August, Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait began in August, al Qaida was preparing to bring down the World Trade Center in August. August, in other words, is the time when all of us should prepare our backup plans, chart our reversals of course, [and] think through possible paradigm changes.

To describe Russian politics as "managed democracy" - and that's sometimes hard for outsiders to understand, because a lot of the forms of democracy exist in Russia, so there are elections; there is a press; there is a campaign, and so on. But the outcome of the campaign is never in doubt. So the campaign is manipulated. There is a real opposition in Russia. There are one or two real opposition figures who do want to change the political system, but they will probably not be allowed to run, and one way or another they will be prevented from being on the ballot.

High national emotions are permissible when a soccer team is playing precisely because they are impermissible at most other times. There aren't, simply, many other places where you can sing your national anthem until you lose your voice without causing a riot. In the context of soccer, flag-waving nationalism - even chauvinistic, anti-foreigner, flag-waving nationalism - is acceptable in Britain.

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 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.

European security may now depend on Germany, France, Britain and one or two others, and it's better to start planning now for the possibility of European-only cyber-defense, counter-terrorism, and conventional defense too.