We live in a time of transition. Transition to a new US president. Transition to a more united Europe. But there is also a much larger transition: from centuries where the West reigned supreme, and set the agenda of world politics, to a more multipolar age, shaped by the renaissance of Asia. Yet clearly it is not so simple as an old-fashioned 'rise and fall of the great powers'. The West still has formidable long-term strengths, and there are large elements of Western-shaped modernity deep in the East. Moreover, this geopolitical transition comes at a time when we face a growing number of global problems - worldwide financial markets in panic, world trade interdependence, climate change, energy shortage and security, poverty, the risk of global pandemics - that challenge us all, in East and West, North and South. This lecture asks how new administrations in the US and Europe might address this long-term strategic challenge. And it suggests how they should.