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.

Developments in information technology and globalised media mean that the most powerful military in the history of the world can lose a war, not on the battlefield of dust and blood, but on the battlefield of world opinion.

The Eurozone has clearly gone spectacularly wrong, pulling down all the continental economies.

I love this country, but the union jack leaves me cold.

To be in Florence is to reflect on Europe's intricate diversity - and its lost creativity.

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.

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.