It is quite clear, however, that there won't be any real changes with the current clan structure having seized power in the course of the Karabakh conflict.

Young people, especially young men due to culture and perhaps testosterone, dream about changing the world, making an impact, doing big things. Now our young people are told life was better in the past, that we should be less ambitious and hold on to what we have. The grand narratives of exploration and change that drove the world forward for a century have been tamed.

Furthermore, the situation in the North Caucasus is rather unstable. Mutual relations and the cooperation between [Vladimir] Putin and [Ramzan] Kadyrov, the high price that has been paid to buy the loyalty of the local elite through an enormous tribute of multibillion[-ruble] investments, all this cannot be an arrangement for good.

If we look at statistical data, we see that Protestant countries in terms of economic development are more successful than those observing Catholicism.

We have again a strange gap. We have the big scientific discoveries around the second, third century BC. Then we have an invention of the so-called Arab system, the positional system of counting with zero dated to the eighth or ninth century.

We see threats to liberal democracy coming from lots of directions. We have to create something new, a common response, because in so many places - the UK, France, Germany - ultranationalists and the far left threaten the free market and liberal democracy.

The worst enemy of the strategist is the clock. Time trouble... Reduces us all to pure reflex and reaction, tactical play. Emotion and instinct cloud our strategic vision when there is no time for proper evaluation.