When you mention the word ideology, everyone has communism in the back of their minds, which was an entirely well formulated ideology and statement of belief. You read the Communist Manifesto and you know what the core of it is.

Global politics remains extremely complex and countries have different interests, which will also lead them to make what might seem as rather bizarre friends and allies.

I think we can expect leaders of Muslim societies to cooperate with each other on many issues just as Western societies cooperate with each other.

The argument now that the spread of pop culture and consumer goods around the world represents the triumph of Western civilization trivializes Western culture. The essence of Western civilization is the Magna Carta, not the Magna Mac. The fact that non-Westerners may bite into the latter has no implications for their accepting the former.

The U.S. has and still is cooperating with various military dictatorships around the world. Obviously we would prefer to see them democratized, but we are doing it because we have national interests, whether it's working with Pakistan on Afghanistan or whatever.

Partial truths or half-truths are often more insidious than total falsehoods.

Quite obviously power will continue to play a central role in global politics as it always does. But usually there is something else.