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.

There is nothing wrong when the Trump administration says it wants to find areas of common ground to work with Russia - perfectly reasonable. The question is, are you willing to pay the Russians in advance for the privilege of working with them in areas that are supposed to be of common interest, and that - I don't see the American interest in doing so.

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.

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

My 40 years in the foreign service and the careers of many of my friends became associated with the fall of the Soviet Empire and the putting in order of what came after - the building of a Europe whole, free, and at peace. It`s hard to recall today how improbable victory in the Cold War appeared.

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.

Both the Bush people and [Barack] Obama people had no problem working with the holdovers. They weren`t out to get them.