There are lots of secretaries who send off special envoys and yes, say, "Do a great job," and that's fine until it costs you something. And then they cut you off.

Two World Wars are sufficient and we are the ones who supported this notion of a united Europe, so there would never be another set of civil wars in Europe again, ever. That was a fabulous success. It was so fabulous that people now take it for granted.

We intend to leave it without further discussion. We respect this request by the government of Uzbekistan

If we blunt Russian efforts now to be aggressive, we may be pleasantly surprised by the policy options that become available to us, in terms of working with a better Russia.

Putinsim is not necessarily the end state for Russia. Russia has moved in many directions since the early 1980s.

The Russian myth that they broadcast to the world, and have their various surrogates in the West repeat, is that somehow the West took advantage of them, that we were mean to them. That writes out of history everything Strobe Talbott and Bill Clinton tried to do with Boris Yeltsin. Strobe Talbott leaned forward doing everything he could to help the Russians, and frankly, I have little patience for the notion that we gave them nothing but bad advice.

Remember, the American grand strategy works when other countries feel secure. But it doesn't work if we acquiesce in the aggression of other countries.