What is ‘greatness’? For most of us, it is the achievement of excellence as individuals and collectively the quality of our culture, its spirituality, its originality of thought, it works of literature, art and architecture. In international relations, however, ‘greatness’ has a very specific meaning as the projection of power. No nation, it goes, is ‘great’ unless it has the ability to exert influence and bind other nations to its will. Power implies the ability to back threats with action, which in turn requires military strength.

In the Introduction to my section on Liturgical poems, I made the comment that arguments from faith are inadmissible in rational ethics. The reason I made that statement is because arguments from faith cannot be deconstructed. They are based on absolute moral laws and ‘rights’, whereas rational ethics are rarely that straightforward and attempt to weigh competing ‘goods’ and values.