The same people the Americans sent over - that we sent over to advise the Russians, we also sent over to advise the Poles about how to build a post-communist economy. Same people, same advice, with radically different results, which leads to suspicion it's not our advice which was the crucial variable. It was the Poles, on one hand, and the Russians on the other. The Poles succeeded; the Russians didn't. Don't blame us.

I am not one of these people that believes that Russia is doomed, or somehow, you know, inevitably disposed to act according to its worst traditions. But all the more reason, therefore, to resist their aggression and take it seriously.

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.

[Russians would like to] undermine the West and its institutions, create doubts about NATO, create doubts about the European Union, support nationalists on the right just as the Soviet communists supported communists on the left. Weaken the West in general and create an atmosphere in which we`re uncertain about ourselves.

Two World Wars are sufficient and we are the ones who supported this notion of a united Europe, so there would never be another set of civil wars in Europe again, ever. That was a fabulous success. It was so fabulous that people now take it for granted.

The United States comes in 1945 and we basically blow the whistle.

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.