The World Today

Iran has energy that China needs and Beijing provides a counter balance to western pressures on Tehran. The benefits are clear, but so are the risks for a rising power in the labyrinthine politics of the Middle East.

Israel is able to rely on American support in almost all circumstances. Is this likely to continue and what are the factors behind it? A unique mixture of presidential leadership, domestic politics in the United States and events in the Middle East are responsible. Any change is unlikely to be rapid and is certainly not inevitable.

The United Nations Secretariat has become an uncritical instrument of Israeli and American policies in the Middle East, says a senior official in his resignation report, which also warns of much wider consequences.

The issue of multiculturalism has not suffered from neglect. Rather the reverse: it is not easy to find a political question that theorists, leaders of intellectual opinion and public officials have given more attention to over the last five years, except the Iraq war. I have come to believe, having just finished a nine year study of Muslims in the Netherlands, that the first is as mistaken an enterprise as the second, though less tragic.

Inevitably, the drive to centralise power in Russia is sparking shock-horror headlines in the west about a return to the Soviet system. But people in government there remain extremely receptive to foreign investment. And western companies in the fast-moving consumer and financial services sectors find it a relatively open market in which to operate. The growing middle classes are enjoying the benefits now but may eventually become more demanding.

It is five years since the treaty setting up the International Criminal Court came into force. The Court has jurisdiction over people committing genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes and takes cases only if there is no local judicial system willing or able to deal with them adequately. How has it done so far?