Matthew Parris

Until the collapse of communism, America's experience as a great power had been of a world in which there was always (as she saw it) one great evil in the universe, committed to her total destruction. She stood for more than national self-interest; she stood, she believed (and often rightly believed), for the forces of good. A Manichaean universe in which America captains the Army of Light while in the surrounding dark 'the hosts of Gideon/Prowl and prowl around', characterises her whole memory of power. That is not surprising. The Founding Fathers were (like fundamentalist Muslims today) in flight from what they saw as a fallen world. God, or destiny, had commanded America to start again. Being the New World was more than a matter of dates; it was a matter of innocence too.

We had not expected a border post. This was not a border. Way over the other side of a high pass through the Carpathian Mountains lay Romania, but this small village nestling in a valley by a rushing river was in Ukraine, wholly in Ukraine, and we were anyway not taking the turning for Romania but continuing only a few kilometres more up a side valley to what our guides, Stas, Elena and Igor, said was a 'rough' mountain hostel. 'Not hotel - not hotel - understand?' said Elena, in the confrontational way of talking that an Englishman might mistake for anger, but is just the way Ukrainians, who are rather mild and helpful people, speak.