From the outside. The iranians are the major most powerful picture of the regime. Earlier someone asked me about the difference between iran and russia in the syrian crisis. Are these two players essentially the same . They are notionally on the same site of a flawed but did they have the same interest . My view of the situation loosely as that for the russians for a variety of reasons this is a more pragmatic decision. Its evidenced by the massive amount of treasury being pulled in and the amount of logistical help in the regime and the mobilization of the allies of these Iraqi Militia so i think the iranians are serious about this. The iranians have functioned very efficiently. I i think their range of policy goals are much closer to be ringed realizes. In the long run than their opponents are. Please join me in thanking christian sahner. [applause] thank you for coming. [inaudible conversations] there is no world order today and perhaps if i tell you what induced me to write the book i was having dinner with a friend professor at yale and i was discussing various ideas i had for writing the book. Most of which had to do with historical episodes and he said you have written a lot of history. Why dont you write something about what concerns you most at the moment . And what concerns me most at the moment, its the absence of world order. The fact that for the first time in history, different regions of the world art interacting with each other in the classical period, the roman empire and the chinese empire existed without any significant knowledge and acted without any reference to what the others were doing. So the reality of the present period is that different societies with different histories are now part of the global system because they dont have an agreed concept of world order. So, i began with this for two reasons, because that is the only formal system of world order and because it was dominance in europe and because the europeans as part of the imperialism around the world as a concept that there was a unique aspect to the european experience. In every other part of the world whatever order existed as part of an empire. In china the idea that these things balance each other didnt exist and in the islamic world that didnt exist in that sense. Europe is the only society where the sovereignty of the states and the balance of their absence with each other was believed to produce International Order and International Law so thats why it started with that and then intended to apply it to many circumstances. But this is not a cookbook you can read to say what the National Order will be. It is an attempt to tell you this is what we are up against now. This is the challenge we have and here are some ways of looking at it but it does not say that i know what the end result of all these complex and these ambiguities, some of which are described, will be