They [Russians] are the adversary, they - we`re the adversary they love to hate.

The Civil War was fought, in a sense, over whether that sentence - all men are created equal - is to be taken literally. And the southerners in the 1850s argued that it was not.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.