I read in today’s FT that the clash between King Juan Carlos of Spain and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has become a video cult-hit on the internet.

It is good viewing. So, in line with my policy of tracking YouTube moments in international politics, I feel moved to re-publish it.

There is something about the last throes of an American presidency that seems to persuade occupants of the White House that it would be a good idea to try and solve the Middle East problem. Jimmy Carter tried it, so did Bill Clinton. In Britain, Tony Blair fell prey to the same temptation and is now a part-time peace envoy (when not giving speeches for exorbitant sums in China.)

The latest lame-duck president to try his hand at the peacemaking game is George W. Bush. To be fair, his efforts are considerably more half-hearted than those of Clinton or Carter. In fact, until very recently there was some doubt about whether the Annapolis summit would even take place. Now we seem to have a confirmed date - November 26th. But expectations are justifiably low. The only senior person in the Bush administration who seems remotely fired up is Condi Rice. In a speech this week she declared that "Failure is not an option" - always a phrase to make the heart sink.

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When the British government surveyed employment in the City of London recently, it came across a pleasingly symmetrical fact. About one-third of the high-skilled workers were foreigners and so were about one-third of the low-skilled workers.

This knowledge that foreign workers are critical to the most dynamic sector of the economy has not stopped Gordon Brown, the prime minister, from growling about “British jobs for British workers”. Across the developed world, politicians such as Mr Brown are responding to public fears about high levels of immigration. In Italy last week, police backed by bulldozers swept through settlements of Romanian immigrants. In the US, Hillary Clinton recently made the first false step in her formidable presidential election campaign by sounding soft on illegal immigration.

Some anti-immigration activists think we are now reaching a tipping point in both western Europe and north America. Immigration is becoming such a hot political issue that politicians will be forced to clamp down. The period of high migration will come to a close.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Comments can be made below.

American academics are constantly on the look-out for the latest foreign policy slogan. A few years ago, Joe Nye had a big hit with the idea of "soft power". Now he and others are back with a new idea called "smart power", which the FT gave a cautious welcome to this morning.

But amidst all the arguments about the need for the US to re-build its influence, it is worth invoking that useful old principle - "Follow the money". If you do that, it suggests the argument is already over. America spends hugely more on missiles and the military than it does on diplomacy and all the paraphenelia of soft power. The State Department’s budget is $10 billion a year. The Department of Defence’s annual budget is $460 billion - plus, at the moment, a further $200 billion a year for the Iraqi and Afghan wars. The entire State Department costs less to maintain than just one of the US’s eight carrier battle groups.

Under the circumstances it is hardly surprising that the diplomats often find themselves sidelined in the big foreign policy arguments. It was the Pentagon that took the big and - in retrospect - disastrous decisions about how to conduct the occupation of Iraq. And it is military needs that are dictating policy towards Pakistan. A policy like backing General Musharraf is clearly disastrous if you are intent on building American "soft power". If your top priority is to maintain a close military co-operation with Pakistan - well, that’s another matter.

Earlier this year Goldman Sachs caused a stir when they predicted that China would have a larger economy than America by 2027. But this week China overtook America in one area that is of particular interest to the likes of Goldman Sachs. PetroChina became the most valuable company in the world. After its stockmarket debut in Shanghai the firm is now valued at over $1 trillion - slightly more than double the value of the world’s second biggest company, ExxonMobil.

PetroChina is no anomaly. Three of the five most valuable companies in the world are now Chinese - China Mobile and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) are the other two. If you take the top 10 companies as your preferred measure, it is four-all between China and America. Sinopec is China’s other entry. The US has Exxon, GE, Altria and Microsoft.

There is an argument that this tells you more about a bubble in the Chinese stock market than about shifts in global economic power. It could just be the equivalent of the moment when the Japanese property bubble grew so extreme that the grounds of the Royal Palace in Tokyo were deemed to be more valuable than the entire state of California. (I always wondered how people worked that out, but you heard it said a lot at the time.)

The bubble argument has something to it. PetroChina’s shares shot up partly because there is huge demand and only 2.2% of the company was floated. As the FT’s Geoff Dyer pointed out earlier this week, it is now trading at 54 times earnings, compared to an industry average of 18 times earnings. But the valuation of other huge Chinese companies - like China Mobile - is much closer to an accurate reflection of the size of the market.

Maybe the PetroChina float will one day seem like a historic curiousity. But in the week in which the dollar sank to new lows against the euro, it certainly feels like something is shifting.

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People facing alarming birthdays often say things like: “Forty is just a number.” You could say the same about “$100 oil”. But such benchmarks concentrate minds. As the oil price threatens to break through $100, politicians all over the world will think hard about the strategic consequences.

So what is likely to happen? The biggest single effect is obvious. Oil producers become richer and more powerful. The biggest oil consumers – the US, China and the European Union – become increasingly anxious. Beneath that big trend, there are smaller effects that could change the course of some of the most delicate and dangerous problems – Iraq, Iran, China’s foreign policy and the resurgence of Russia.

The effects of a rising oil price on the economies of the producing countries are dramatic. The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries made $650bn from oil sales in 2006, compared with $110bn in 1998. Russian oil and gas revenues have quadrupled over the same period.

When bad governments make good money, they become more relaxed at home and more assertive abroad.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Comments can be made below.

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first invite to address a joint session of Congress. Nicolas Sarkozy will adore his moment in the limelight tomorrow. Anybody would. But it will probably be particularly special for a man who, according to his estranged wife, sees power as "a Stradivarius" violin. Tomorrow’s speech will be like playing solo in Carnegie Hall.

Still, if he examines the list of around 100 world leaders to have been granted a similar honour, Sarkozy might be given pause. Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin were assassinated. Ferdinand Marcos and the Shah of Iran were overthrown. Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam was murdered in an American-backed coup. Bettino Craxi, Syngman Ree and Carlos Salinas were driven into exile. Roh Tae Woo of South Korea was imprisoned for treason, mutiny and corruption. Being honoured by Congress is obviously a dangerous business.

It seems unlikely that Sarko will meet any of these grisly fates. The man whose example should really serve as a warning is Tony Blair. Blair is still alive and making speeches. But his address to a joint session of Congress in July 2003 - interrupted by innumerable flattering ovations - now looks like a low point rather than a triumph.

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Sometimes it can be fun to be the bearer of bad tidings. On Saturday night I was able to stroll over to a senior member of the British foreign policy establishment and tell him that a state of emergency had been declared in Pakistan. Lawyers, politicians and human rights activists were under arrest. The senior member looked suitably concerned, got out his BlackBerry, called up the news and began to read. “Oh dear,” he said.

Oh dear, indeed. It is a cliché of the international relations business that “Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world”. This is a nation with nuclear weapons, al-Qaeda bases, large lawless areas bordering Afghanistan and a rising tide of domestic militancy and terrorism. The US and its allies have treated General Pervez Musharraf as a crucial partner in trying to deal with these problems. But the general’s latest move threatens to produce turmoil and strips away the facade of constitutionalism that made it easier for the west to support him. So the western powers have to ask whether the general is – as they say – now part of the problem, rather than part of the solution?

The remainder of this column can be read here; comments can be made below.

If you are on the international affairs circuit - and you play your cards right - you could probably spend most weekends conferring about something or other. Of course, the importance of the subject and the level of the participants are all factors when deciding whether to give up your weekend. But - as conference organisers well know - a swanky location is always a big draw. And they don’t come much grander than Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire, where I have just spent the weekend. The conference itself - on immigration to Europe - was interesting, and I’ll probably write about it soon. But Ditchley - one of the great country houses of England - is an experience in itself. It was a favourite of Churchill’s who stayed there 14 times in the war.

By tradition, English country houses should be slightly uncomfortable. I have always liked the cartoon of a hostess showing a guest to his bedroom and saying - "It’s rather cold, so I’ve put an extra dog on your bed." But, at Ditchley, they now even have mod cons like central heating.

The entertainment, however, was like something out of a Jane Austen novel. On Saturday night, I found myself listening to an impromptu piano recital in the drawing room. In an Austen novel, it would have been Elizabeth Bennett or some other charming young woman tinkling the ivories. At Ditchley, it was a couple of British ambassadors in black tie, playing a Schubert duet. It certainly made a change from watching "Match of the Day" on a Saturday night.

There was only country house ingredient missing. I felt the weekend would have been complete if they could have arranged for one of the guests to be murdered. Then - according to tradition - a detective would arrive from the local village. We would all have been interviewed in the library. And the following morning the detective could announce - "It was Sir Andrew Green with the lead piping in the green drawing room."

The king of Saudi Arabia has just made his first royal visit to Britain for 20 years. Roula Khalaf reports that the Saudis were surprised by the anger and criticism that was directed towards them in the British media. They shouldn’t have been. The fact is that the British are extremely uncomfortable about the sleazy nature of British-Saudi relations. I recently met a senior Foreign Office official who was willing to talk unguardedly about all manner of issues, except one thing - relations with Saudi Arabia and, in particular, the decision to drop a corruption inquiry into arms sales. At that point, he just shut up and refused to answer questions. I would say he was squirming, except that senior mandarins don’t squirm - they just look blank.

But it remains the case that when the Brits think about the Saudis, the ideas that are generally brought to mind are: arms deals, corruption, Mark Thatcher, the suppression of police inquiries, human-rights abuses, the sponsorship of terrorism, and the impossibility of buying a drink. None of these are positive images. Under the circumstances it was peculiarly inept of the Saudis to claim that they had provided valuable intelligence on the London tube bombings, which had been ignored. It would be even more appreciated if they stopped funding lunatic Wahabi mosques.

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