It's all very well for us to sit here in the west with our high incomes and cushy lives, and say it's immoral to violate the sovereignty of another state. But if the effect of that is to bring people in that country economic and political freedom, to raise their standard of living, to increase their life expectancy, then don't rule it out.

I would say I'm a 19th-century liberal, possibly even an 18th-century one.

It’s our generation that is witnessing the end of Western predominance. The average American used to be more than 20 times richer than the average Chinese. Now it’s just five times, and soon it will be 2.5 times.

If young men have jobs - or the prospects of jobs - they are less likely to take up arms, they are less likely to join the resistance.

No civilization, no matter how mighty it may appear to itself, is indestructible.

I refuse to accept that Western civilization is like some hopeless old version of Microsoft DOS, doomed to freeze, then crash. I still cling to the hope that the United States is the Mac to Europe's PC, and that if one part of the West can successfully update and reboot itself, it's America.

The British press has an insatiable appetite for making public things that should be private. It's a prurience that I've never understood.