One morning while I was reading the newspaper over breakfast, I was struck by the following sentence in an article that recounted the highlights of a wide-ranging interview with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell:“In my judgment, any country right now that has a despotic leadership, that is unrepresentative of its people, that is not putting in place market economic systems, that is rife with corruption, a lack of transparency and no rule of law, that thinks it can achieve a position on the world stage through development of weapons of mass destruction that will turn out to be fool’s gold for them, is a loser,” he said.This sentence formed part of an attempt to explain President Bush’s then-recent use of the phrase “axis of evil” to describe Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.