In my view, [Vladimir] Putin despises the West in general and the United States in particular, both for who we are, our liberal values, and for what we`ve done, which is to take down the Soviet Empire.

No great power is ever satisfied with its sphere of influence. They never are.

I think the West is in a low point we haven`t seen since the 1930s.

It was my honor to have done what I could do to help. I learned to never underestimate the possibility of change, that values have power and that time and patience can pay off, especially if you`re serious about your objectives.

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.

The Russians are using the tools at their disposal to weaken Western solidarity, to create doubt, to support nationalist parties, just as the old Soviets supported leftist parties. We need a united Western response to this multi-pronged threat.

The usual practice is that the people in their jobs keep their jobs until their successors are named. Now, that`s the way the [George] Bush administration treated the [Bill] Clinton people. And that`s the way the [Barack] Obama administration treated the [George W.] Bush people.