The historian A.J.P. Taylor wrote one of the most powerful openings of any book. “In the state of nature which Hobbes imagined, violence was the only law, and life was ‘nasty brutish and short’,” he wrote in The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918. “Though individuals never lived in this state of nature, the Great Powers of Europe have always done so. Sovereign states have distinguished Euro
Geopolitics SCMP Jul 18, 2026
