Our military plans should be based on the assumption of unpredictability, rather than on carefully drawn, static models of the world.

Everyone moans about the collapsing U.S. infrastructure.

Societies are healthiest when their radius of trust is broad and when people feel they can influence their own fate.

Make the important interesting.

Our military plans should be based on the assumption of unpredictability, rather than on carefully drawn, static models of the world.

It seems to be the case that for the people who actually are all in with Donald Trump - which is who knows: 35, 38, 40 per cent of the electorate - apparently nothing can dissuade them.

If you didn't know better, you might have thought in 2003 and 2004 that U.S. government strategy was being set by people trying to make enemies rather than friends in the Arab-Islamic world. And if you didn't know better, you might think that the Chinese government's approach to the Olympics is being set by people trying to make the country look bad.