carries with it distinctive views about globalisation, intervention and political development. In Roy's telling, wooly rhetoric about globalisation blurring international boundaries and diffusing threats around the world makes it impossible to establish a hierarchy of threat and relevance. As a result, it becomes impossible to establish any strategic priorities. Roy writes: 'Globalisation of the threat makes any rational strategy impossible and paves the way for a hollow, bombastic rhetoric, which above all serves Western societies' internal debates.' The befuddlement engendered by globalisation waffle is shared by Europe, where strategy and foreign policy collapse into managing social problems. On the one hand, domestic problems of integrating Muslim populations are treated as if they are a global problem of reified 'Western values' and their compatibility with 'Islam'. On the other hand, the Middle East becomes a stage for Europe to project its own vacuous ideas about citizenship and multiculturalism. Perversely, Western governments reinforce Muslims' outsider status by encouraging their migrant populations' to face outwards. Hence French diplomats plead for fatwas from mullahs in Cairo to support French domestic policy, while Danish diplomats are expected to deal with protests by Danish Muslims about the cartoons of the Prophet. In terms of Iraq, Roy points out that the failed adventure there is not simply a 'hare-brained scheme that has fizzled out.' Underpinning the disaster is an influential doctrine of intervention and democratisation shared by all the leading developmental institutions, both intergovernmental and non-governmental. Its assumptions are: 'Distrust of existing governments, encouragement of civil society,