The euro is a great achievement. It's a symbolic achievement. But, the European constitution was a missed opportunity.

Even if it doesn't sound like it at first, that's an identity that Europe can go out into the world with and take a leading role.

I am 60, and I am as much an internationalist as when I was younger, when I was a Marxist-Leninist. Internationalism is one of the rare pieces of that heritage to which I remain loyal. That is Barack Obama's strength. A politician has finally understood that politics is not only about the closing of a mine in Ohio-it is also about the will to reach out, to embrace the world of today's young Americans. That way, young Americans may eventually reconcile with politics.

There is a true weakness in American thought today: their incapacity to be interested in the intelligence of evil.

The terrorists exist, and I think we must speak to them, not to establish a dialogue-since for serious terrorists that is unfortunately out of the question - but to learn how their brains work, to be better able to fight them.

I definitely don't agree with that sort of rhetoric from the United States - this idea that all the major conflicts of our age need to be solved militarily.

France is a country where thinking is supposed to be furtive, invisible, almost clandestine. France is a country of cliques and sects.