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

Realism is important in foreign policy. You have to be realistic about what you can achieve, and about the pitfalls, and problems along the way, of which there are plenty. Nothing is easy. It's always rough.

We are a new nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. That's what makes us Americans. When we sign onto that belief, we sign onto the core American identity, and that's very deep in us.

The Civil War was fought, in a sense, over whether that sentence - all men are created equal - is to be taken literally. And the southerners in the 1850s argued that it was not.

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.

[Russians] want to bring us down to make them feel better about the failure of the Soviet Union. I don`t mean bring us down as in collapse, but bring us down a notch in a big way.

Republicans - Reagan but also George W. Bush - believed in freedom, and they believed in America's role. To have the governing party speak in terms of a zero-sum world, or speak in terms of America's purpose as no more than grabbing the largest share possible in the short run, goes against our foreign policy tradition that goes back to 1900, really.