Last week, the American secretary of defence, Jim Mattis, declared a new era: “There has been a return of great power competition… great power competition — not terrorism — is now the primary focus of US security”.

Is democracy in decline? If you talk about the quality of democracy the answer is clearly yes. The US, the world’s first and most important democracy — although at the beginning a limited democracy for white men only — is in trouble.

Looking for a good cause for 2018? Something you can do while sitting in your armchair. Something that needs to be done if we are to live in a “clean” planet. Campaigning against torture is what it is. It can be done by e-mail, s-mail, phone, text and petition signing.

It was late 2003, the Liberian war was winding down after taking the lives of 250,000 civilians, spawning a small army of deadly child soldiers, and I was sitting at lunch in Monrovia inside the president’s palatial office and residence with the American ambassador on my right an

Every so often reports emerge that attempt to measure which are the best countries to live in. The Nordic countries plus New Zealand, Holland and Switzerland, usually come out top. Sweden is number one just for the sheer stability of life and security.

The nuclear weapon missile business is contradictory, full of missteps, highly dangerous and prepared in its madness (Mutually Assured Destruction, aka MAD, they used to call it in Cold War days) to plunge the world into a nuclear war that will reduce most of the world to dust.

Poets as diverse as William Blake and Yehuda Amichai have sung the praises of the heavenly Jerusalem, a land without strife or rancour, war or bitterness, envy, acquisitiveness or hatred.

When, soon after the election, president Barack Obama invited Donald Trump to the White House we did not learn much about their conversation.

Timing is everything.