So What Were Europeans Telling Their Leaders?

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.

But Transitions From The Politics Of Violence To Democratic Compromise Are Always Messy.

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.

It Is Not Just That It Is Profoundly Offensive To The Leaders And People Of A Democratic Germany To Paint Hitler On The Wall (or On The Remnants Of The Wall). It Is Also Consummately Counterproductive. Such Sauce Does Not Make The Meat Of Substantive Criticism More Interesting. It Means That The Whole Dish Is Pushed Away. It Does Not Mean That Britain's Voice Is Listened To More Attentively In The Councils Of Europe. It Means That It Is Listened To Even Less.

Ordinary Americans, And Especially The Small Minority Active In Democrat And Republican Primaries, Must Learn More Of What People Across The Globe Are Thinking And Saying About The Us. For If You Follow That, You Realise That The Erosion Of American Power Is Happening Faster Than Most Of Us Predicted -- While The Politicians In Washington Behave Like Rutting Stags With Locked Antlers.