Well, That's The Way Democracy Works. We

I'm A Historian By Training And By Conviction. And So The Thing That Has Throughout Informed My Thinking About International Relations Is History. I Think, For Example, The Reason That I Was Perhaps Able To See Sooner Than Some Others That The Soviet Empire In Eastern Europe Was Decaying--if Not Disintegrating--was That I Came To It Through History And Through Germany, Rather Than Through Sovietology And Through Moscow. And Therefore The Starting Point Was That No Empire In History Has Lasted Forever, And This One Won't Either.

The Trouble Is That Privacy Is At Once Essential To, And In Tension With, Both Freedom And Security. A Cabinet Minister Who Keeps His Mistress In Satin Sheets At The French Taxpayer's Expense Cannot Justly Object When The Press Exposes His Misuse Of Public Funds. Our Freedom To Scrutinise The Conduct Of Public Figures Trumps That Minister's Claim To Privacy. The Question Is: Where And How Do We Draw The Line Between A Genuine Public Interest And That Which Is Merely What Interests The Public?

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.

Starting From The Ruins Of The Second World War, We - All Europeans Said, After Centuries Of Fighting Each Other, We're Going To Build Permanent Arrangements In Which Peace Between European Countries Is Secured, Freedom Is Secured, And Growing Prosperity. And That's What We Have Done Over The Last 70 Years.

Well, That's The Way Democracy Works. We Have To Build This Europe With The Material We Have At Our Disposal. And This Material Is National Democracy.