Martin Wolf

I think this is a very, very powerful idea and correct.

China's unity held it back because it didn't allow for this competition.

Europe was built around competition among the states, among the rulers, and within them as a result, partly because of this.

I won't go through all that because it takes too long.

Then at the end of this magnificent process, not surprisingly, when the modern states were emerging after the Industrial Revolution, nationalism became the way of mobilizing the people.

For the first time, you really created mobilized societies.

Before that, the armies were predominantly professional.

or class-based armies.

The French really invented the universal conscription state.

And this culminated in the two world wars, which completely shattered Europe.

It shattered its idea of itself, its confidence in itself, and its values, because look what happened in the death camps.

So Europe's triumph ended up in a catastrophe.

And that's what Europeans are.

I'm old enough to remember all this.

I was born in just after the war.

It was actually Europe itself that destroyed itself.

In the end, by the way, that led to the direct liberation of all the empires because they didn't have the power anymore to do it.

And America was very keen on it.

Absolutely right, by the way.

So anyway, Europe said, after that, we have to be something completely different.