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.

America's sanctions policy remains intact, and it will remain intact until it changes, if it does, and I'm not sure it will.

9/11 was a genuine trauma, and President George W. Bush rallied the country. I think the Iraq war was ill-considered, but there - it was done in the wake of a national trauma. And that the errors made under such circumstances are different than errors made in the cold.

I am not against working with Russia in areas of common interests at the same time. We're smart enough, or we should be smart enough to have a dual track policy. You know, walk and chew gum at the same time.

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.

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

The sense the great democracies of the world - Europe, the United States, Japan, others - are going to set the agenda for the world. [Russians] want to bring that down.