Europe's Biggest Problem Is Its

Nuclear Proliferation - The Proliferation Of Wmds Altogether - Is One Of The Greatest Dangers Of Our Time.

Facts Are Subversive. Subversive Of The Claims Made By Democratically Elected Leaders As Well As Dictators, By Biographers And Autobiographers, Spies And Heroes, Torturers And Post-modernists. Subversive Of Lies, Half-truths, Myths; Of All Those "easy Speeches That Comfort Cruel Men.

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.

Russia Has Lost An Empire But Not Yet Found A Role. Russia Has To Decide What It Wants To Be. And As We Know In Britain, That Takes Some Time. It Is Quite Tough To Lose An Empire And Russia Lost Its Empire Very Rapidly And Very Admirably, That Is To Say Peacefully, It Didn't Fight.

To Be In Florence Is To Reflect On Europe's Intricate Diversity - And Its Lost Creativity.