Russia could be, in fact, it would have to be a different Russia, but it could be a splendid ally. I will say this for the Russians: on their - in their favor, they have the intellectual capacity and the habits of mind to act in the world on a strategic scale, and were they do to so in service of a better cause than their current set of grievances, they would be a natural partner.

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

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.

America's grand strategy did not come from nowhere. It followed from our deeper conception of ourselves, and our American identity. Who are we, Americans? What is our nation? We are not an ethnostate with identity rooted in shared blood. The option of a white man's republic ended at Appomattox.

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.

That was pretty smooth, because you don`t want something to go wrong when you have a whole senior level of actings. That`s not a position you want to be in. It`s OK to replace your team, but usually you want them to be in place until the new people are confirmed.