David Miliband UK Foreign Secretary

Democracy is not an overnight sensation. It takes tens, sometimes hundreds, of years. It suffers setbacks, periods of crisis, descents into danger, threats from within and without. But it survives because it is, after all, the will of the people. Democracy exists to still the conflicts that will always flare up between peoples. The only thing they need to agree on is that they will settle their differences not by the time-honoured method of force majeure but by the difficult, protracted, noble pursuit of politics. Read more here