Nicolas Sarkozy has star appeal. But to judge from his political testimony, he lacks a coherent political philosophy and has few ideas about how to arrest France's decline

The Lebanon crisis has once again shown that foreign policy is made in Downing Street, not the foreign office. The recently retired head of the diplomatic service tries to explain why the FCO matters

Multilateralists are convinced that second-term Bush will embrace them

Timothy Garton Ash has written an ambitious book about the future of the west. But he is too sanguine about EU-US relations and will not accept that Britain does, sometimes, have to choose between them

Do divisions over Iraq and enlargement spell the end to significant new EU integration measures? What next for Europe?

Iraq has severed the thread of Blairite foreign policy. This fifth war may turn out to have been his last

There are lessons to be learned from the mistakes made in the heart of government that led to Britain's defeat at the UN

The EU's constitutional convention must take a tough line on small countries that fail to ratify treaty changes

Washington is not listening to European leaders at present-not even to Tony Blair.

Whoever is eventually declared the next American president will have to deal with a more assertive Europe

A widely acclaimed book on the EU is ten years out of date

Britain's intelligence ties with the US-which includes spying on other EU states-may undermine Europe's new defence policy