Brown has adopted a more cautious approach, signalling a reluctance to take to arms to spread "liberal democracy". And yet, as Brown and his new foreign secretary, David Miliband, have found, a new threat is emerging which neither Britain nor other western states have prepared for - the spread of Chinese and Russian power and influence. The theatre of battle is the City of London. Over the past decade, the UK has allowed its capital city to become the home for many of the world's most cutthroat and dodgy global financiers. Just as we turned a blind eye to fundamentalists setting up shop here in the 1990s, in the vain hope that they would treat us gently as they sought to undermine governments elsewhere, so we are doing the same now, all in the name of global capitalism.

What if the real challenge is posed not by failing states but increasingly successful ones? What if China and Russia are now setting the terms of engagement? What if, as is already the case in parts of the developing world, the Chinese message of rapid development, unencumbered by lectures about human rights and democracy, is proving more attractive? Meanwhile, leaders in the so-called developed countries scurry round the world ingratiating themselves with the chancelleries of Beijing and Moscow. The countries that complain the least secure the most lucrative contracts. The free market has been well and truly decoupled from the free society.

The terrible consequence of the Bush-Blair global misadventure is to have undermined what remaining support there was for western notions of liberal democracy. Countries that lecture about universal values do not deserve to be listened to if they indulge in rendition flights and torture. Brown and Miliband are right to distance themselves from past policies. They have correctly identified the immediate danger, but - apart from kicking out a few diplomats and trying to talk tough - they have not even begun
to think about how to cope with states that have seized on the capitalist free-for-all with alarming success.