Free societies are societies in which the right of dissent is protected.

My theory is that security - also against terror - can only be accomplished through global democratization.

Just as the 99% of Soviet citizens who supported the Soviet regime in 1985 was no indication of what the people inside the USSR really thought, the army of true believers that we think we see in the Arab world is an illusion.

I am optimistic that peace can be achieved in the region because I believe that every society on earth can be free and that if freedom comes to the Middle East, there can be peace.

On the other hand, if the free world is concerned with how a new Palestinian leader governs, then the peace process will have a real chance to succeed.

Free societies are societies in which the right of dissent is protected.

This scepticism is the same scepticism I heard a generation ago in the USSR when few thought that a democratic transformation behind the iron curtain was possible.