Europe’s for wimps. Tough guys go east

Whoever becomes the next president of the United States will have to get China on his side The British, French and Germans will no doubt be flattered by the fact that Barack Obama took the trouble to visit them at the end of his I-can-be-a-commander-in-chief trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, but they shouldn’t be fooled by it. Having taken his political and personal risks in the two war zones and in Israel, he was taking the soft option by heading west to Europe. Had this been a serious effort to show that he understands the way the world is changing, he would instead have flown eastwards to Asia. After all, Asia is home to the world’s fastest-growing big economies in China and India, to its three newest nuclear-weapons powers – India, Pakistan and North Korea – and to all the countries that will determine during the next US... [read full story]