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.

The whole project of European Union is one in deep trouble.

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.

One thing, however, I know with certainty: violence, or the direct threat of violence, of the kind we have seen in the past few days, is totally unjustified as a response to any published word or image.

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.

If you had said to anyone in 1945, at the end of the Second World War with the continent it ruins, that you could have a European Union of 28 member states stretching from Portugal in the West to Estonia in the East, all of them more-or-less liberal democracies - they wouldn't have believed you.

The key to the survival of liberty in the modern world is the embrace of multiple identities.