I Love This Country, But

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.

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 Eurozone Has Clearly Gone Spectacularly Wrong, Pulling Down All The Continental Economies.

So What Were Europeans Telling Their Leaders? The General Message Was Perfectly Summed Up By The Cartoonist Chappatte, Who Drew A Group Of Protesters Holding Up A Placard Shouting "unhappy" - And One Of Their Number Shouting Through A Megaphone Into The Ballot Box. There Are 28 Member States And 28 Varieties Of Unhappy.

I Find Chinese Debates About Their Political System Domestically, But Also About China's Claims In The International System, To Be Among The Most Original And Surprising And Exciting Of Our Time. The Starting Point Is A System That None Of Us Had Anticipated, Which I Call Leninist Capitalism, But Also Obviously Because It Is The Most Important Emerging Power. The Question Of China's Relations With The United States In Particular, And The Rest Of The World In General, Is The Question Of War And Peace In The 21st Century.