Europe seems intent on slicing itself up into ever smaller pieces. In the next month, Kosovo is likely to declare independence – making it the seventh new country to emerge from the wreckage of Yugoslavia. The Soviet Union has given way to 15 new states. Even in western Europe, there is talk of Belgium dividing in two, while a pro-independence party has taken power in Scotland.

People tend to treat countries that split up a bit like married couples. It is a sad event. And it is true that a unilateral declaration of Kosovan independence could cause a new crisis in the Balkans.

But if the formation of new countries can be achieved peacefully, it is usually a cause for celebration. This is the age of the small state.

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

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.

To Britons of a certain generation - my generation - the name George Soros will always carry a certain mystique. In the US he may be regarded primarily as a billionaire with liberal views and in Eastern Europe he is associated with the Open Society institutes. But in Britain he will always be thought of above all as "the man who broke the Bank of England". Soros’s successful speculation against the pound in 1992 is widely believed to have caused "Black Wednesday", when Britain was forced out of the European exchange rate mechanism. The whole experience was a memorable crash course for the British public (and indeed the British government) in the power of global financial markets.

Curiously, perhaps, very little odium attached to Soros himself, after this unfortunate incident. He might have humiliated the government and forced a devaluation. But nobody seems to hold it against him. On the contrary, he is widely admired in Britain and is regarded as a something of a guru. I am as vulnerable to the Soros mystique as the next man, so I was intriuged to meet him for the first time at a small(ish) dinner for the launch of the European Council on Foreign Relations last week.

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What is the answer to the rise of fundamentalism across the Muslim world? For years Europeans and Americans thought they knew the antidote: secular democracy.

In the Islamic world, Turkey has been the shining example. Not only is the country a member of Nato; it has also been held up as proof that a country can be simultaneously Muslim, prosperous, secular and democratic. So what are we to make of events in Turkey now? Secularists have demonstrated in huge numbers because they are terrified by the prospect of the indirect election of a mildly Islamist president, and the army has hinted that it may stage a coup to protect the secular character of the state. Secularism and democracy seem to be at war.

The paradoxes do not stop there. American neo-conservatives hoped that the invasion of Iraq would create a new bulwark of pro-western democracy in the Islamic world. But while the US has failed in this aim, it has managed to inflict grave damage on its strategic relationship with its most important partner in the Muslim world: Turkey.

The remainder of Gideon’s weekly column can be read here (FT.com subscription required).

The accepted narrative about France - at least in the United States - is that the country is a total mess. The economy is a wreck; society is falling apart; radical Islam is on the march and the fascists are on the rise. The first round of voting in the French election on Sunday has provided a corrective to this gloomy orthodoxy.

There were two really good pieces of news, which are testament to the health of French democracy. First, voter turn-out was amazingly high - over 84% of the electorate voted; compare that to the 56% in the last American presidential election and under 60% in the last British general election.

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The French created the European Union, so it would be appropriate if they destroyed it. Listen to the arguments made by the leading candidates in the French presidential election – Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal – and it sounds as if they are intent on taking a sledgehammer to the “Common European home”, built by their compatriots Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman and Jacques Delors.

Of course, Mr Sarkozy and Ms Royal would reject any suggestion that they are eurosceptics. Both argue that they want a “better Europe” or a “different Europe”. But the visions of Europe that they are dangling before French voters are likely to be unacceptable to the rest of the EU. So the French presidential election is setting the stage for confrontation between France and its European partners in Brussels, followed by rampant euroscepticism at home.

This is a familiar formula in Britain. But the rest of the EU has learnt to live with a bolshy Britain. An enraged France would be a much more threatening prospect. Unlike Britain, France has always been central to the “construction of Europe”. The French are also members of the inner core of the EU – the 12 countries that have adopted the single European currency that is the Union’s most ambitious act of economic and political integration.

The remainder of Gideon Rachman’s column can be read here (FT.com subscribers only).

The news about Silvio Berlusconi this morning made me feel nostalgic. The man is obviously a rogue and a buffoon. But he is fantastically entertaining - as the latest public exchange of letters with his wife illustrates all too clearly.

I got to observe Berlusconi at reasonably close quarters during the Italian presidency of the European Union in 2003. He threw a banquet for journalists in the Villa Madama in Rome - and his display there revealed several of his characterstic qualities: charm, lechery, paranoia.

First, he made sure that all the prettiest female journalists were sitting at his table. I was a little way away, but they seemed to be having a pretty uproarious time. Apparently Berlusca made great play of the fact that there was a magnificent Roman-style bath in the villa, and offered to show it to his guests after dinner. Then he gave a long and rambling speech, whose main argument seemed to be that all his legal problems stemmed from the fact that the press and judiciary in Italy are controlled by Communists. He even claimed to be the most persecuted man in the country, which was an odd take on events - since he was also the richest man, and the prime minister. The Italian diplomats at my table were absolutely cringing and didn’t know where to look. And a German journalist sitting next to me said in shocked tones: "This is a very serious matter. A major European country is in the hands of a lunatic."

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Forgive me, if I indulge in a traditional journalist’s device - namely drawing sweeping conclusions from passing through an airport. But it is hard not to be impressed when you land in Madrid, as I did on Tuesday. The new terminal at Barajas airport opened in February and was awarded the prestigious Sterling architecture prize on October 15th. Its spaciousness, beauty and unhurried feel are particularly striking for anyone who has just arrived from the hell-hole that is Heathrow.
But the contrast that most impresses me is not between Britain and Spain, but between the relative fortunes of Spain and Italy. Madrid’s new airport is a symbol of the confidence and growing prosperity of the country. By comparison, the run-down airport and infrastructure of Rome seem to reflect Italy’s sagging spirits.
The Spanish tell me that within two years, they expect Spain’s GDP-per-capita (measured in purchasing-power-parity) to overtake that of Italy. At the moment Spain’s GDP-per-capita is 98.2 per cent of the EU average, while Italy’s is 100.5 per cent. But Spain grew at 3.5 per cent last year and is expected to rack up 3.1 per cent growth this year. By contrast Italy registered 0 per cent growth last year and is expected to grow by 1.3 per cent this year. Last week Italian government debt was downgraded. Italy’s debt-to-GDP ratio stands at a frightening 106.6 per cent; compare that with Spain’s 43.1 per cent. The Spanish government is running budget surpluses, Italy is struggling with persistent deficits.
It will be a deeply symbolic moment in both countries, if and when it is announced that the average Spaniard is richer than the average Italian. The Italians have always looked down on the Spanish a little bit. (Much as the French have always looked down on the Italians). Italy is a member of the G8; Spain is not. Italy was a leading industrial democracy, when Spain was struck in Francoist isolation. Tourism in Italy was associated with high culture, while Spain had sun, sea and sangria. But these days it is Spain which is growing fastest and which is exhibiting a new cultural confidence. The Spanish film director Pedro Almodovar is globally celebrated -  much as the Italian director, Fellini, was in the 1960s and 1970s. It is Spain that is full of exciting new architecture from Madrid airport to the Guggenheim in Bilbao.
What accounts for the difference between Spanish and Italian fortunes? A blog entry is perhaps not the place to attempt a full-scale analysis. But three things strike me. First, Spain has had very few governments compared to Italy’s fragile and revolving coalition. The Spanish governments of Gonzalez, Aznar and now Zapatero have had time to put sound policies in place and see them through to fruition. Second, the Spanish welfare state is much less generous than Italy’s - and organised labour is weaker, as is the extreme left. Finally, the magic ingredient - confidence. Spain has bags of it at the moment. Italy seems gloomy and fearful by contrast.

In Europe, the big development of the week is the announcement that Romania and Bulgaria will indeed join the European Union next January. The Union will henceforth have 27 members and over half a billion citizens. But, at least in western Europe, it is a peculiarly joyless moment, as the FT reports this morning. When the first eight countries from Central Europe were admitted in 2004 there was certainly ambivalence in the rest of the EU - but also a genuine sense that this was a historic moment. The division of Europe was finally over.
But while Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary have histories and literatures that are familiar to many in western Europe, this is much less true of Romania and Bulgaria. Plus, there is a widespread feeling that the rules have been bent to let these two countries in. The sourness of the mood in France in particular was captured by an online poll of readers of Le Monde;  more than two-thirds feel that Romania and Bulgaria are being admitted prematurely. My guess is, however, that all this furore will die down. Within a few years it will probably seem entirely natural that the Romanians and Bulgarians are EU members. But there are two big provisos. First, there must be no nasty political shocks in either country. Second, the flows of people out of the country must be of an order that the richer bits of Europe can cope with. I’m reasonably optimistic on both grounds.

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If you asked the average member of the European elite when world affairs began to take a turn for the worse, my guess is that many of them would plump not for 9/11, but instead for the moment when the US Supreme Court ruled that George W. Bush had won the 2000 presidential election. As President Bush’s reputation has sunk in Europe, so the reputation of Al Gore - the "lost leader" - has soared. The fact that Gore has become a standard bearer for action on climate change has only added to his saintly reputation.
I got a taste of Europe’s "adoration of Al" on Sunday night in Brussels, when Gore passed through town for a gala showing of his film, An Inconvenient Truth. No fewer than four worthies lined up to introduce Gore’s brief speech. One of them, a Swedish academic whose name escapes me, managed to liken Gore to both Albert Schweitzer and Gandhi.
Then we all trooped into Brussels’s grandest theatre for a showing of the film. Gore was introduced yet again, this time by the EU’s environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas. Mr Dimas ended his peroration by lamenting the fact that Europeans aren’t allowed to vote in American elections. Ain’t life a bitch, as they say on the other side of the Atlantic. Maybe the EU should take the issue up in trade talks with the United States. Perhaps there could be some sort of reciprocal arrangement. Greeks like Mr Dimas get to vote in the American presidential election - and in return Texans get to vote in the French presidential election.
As for the Gore film itself - it pulled off the unusual feat of being simultaneously very compelling and strangely dull. The overall message is convincing, depressing and powerfully presented. But the film also drags a little, since it is essentially a glorified power-point presentation, with a few home movies from the Gore family album thrown in.

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