Be careful about a policy generated with enthusiasm in the rush of a moment. It usually doesn't turn out well.

ISIS is the near-term threat, and that the longer - or the mid-term challenge is managing the rise of China. There's some evidence that that's the thinking of the [Donald Trump] administration. That's a perfectly reasonable approach. Well, if that's the case, then you surely want to have a united West to deal with both, and you want to have Russia alongside, but maybe not this Russia while it's busy trying to undermine your chief asset, which is a united West.

Our mistakes, blunders, flaws, and shortcomings notwithstanding, the world America made after 1945 and 1989 has enjoyed the longest period of general peace in the west since Roman times, and decades of prosperity.

Ronald Reagan reached out to Gorbachev. At the same time, we were pushing back against the Soviets all over the world. He was able to do two things at once, and it worked out very well for us.

The European Union, ok, right, it has a bureaucracy, right. It`s sometimes difficult to deal with but so what? You hire a couple of people like me to work the European Union, and it can be done. It`s pretty good.

I believe the liberal international order is under assault from Russia, and from other authoritarian regimes, and it is being questioned from within the West by nationalists, by nativists, and by people who doubt our - doubt the values of the West. We've gone through periods like this before; in the '70s, after Vietnam and Watergate, and certainly in the '30s, when people thought liberal democracy was dead, and the future belonged either to the fascists or the communists.

Lincoln is quoted more often than he's understood, and he understood that the founding principle of our nation is, in fact, the Declaration of Independence.