People feel that European institutions are remote and bureaucratic, run by shady cosmopolitan elites. Britain is not absolutely exceptional because if you look at the opinion polls, those sentiments are now quite widespread also in continental Europe.

I have also been saddened, though hardly surprised, by the weakness of the EU's reaction to the criminal attack on the Danish embassy in Syria, which seems to have been permitted, if not actively encouraged, by the Syrian regime.

The main problem with American power is not that it is American... No, the main problem with American power is the power itself. It would be dangerous even for an archangel to wield so much power.

Nuclear proliferation - the proliferation of WMDs altogether - is one of the greatest dangers of our time.

A central claim of the Bush administration's foreign policy is that the spread of democracy in the Middle East is the cure for terrorism.

As one looks back, one sees that the fall of the Berlin Wall opened the door to three developments - the Eurozone, which was crafted around German unification, the free movement of peoples within Europe, particularly people from the new democracies of Eastern Europe, and, more broadly, it opened the door to globalization.

But transitions from the politics of violence to democratic compromise are always messy.