The kind of president we need has little to do with ideology and more to do with a willingness to wield power to moral ends.

The British bombed German cities [during World War II] to keep the workers awake at night. So instead of dropping one bomb, we sent a thousand planes and, yes, we took out the factory sometimes, but we also took out the city. It reached the point where we wanted more efficient ways to destroy a city. The result was nuclear weapons.

Constraint theory defines for you what outcomes are possible and what outcomes are impossible. It also eliminates wishful thinking.

One definition of the wicked is that they will resort to whatever means are necessary to achieve their ends. Therefore, if those who oppose wickedness don't learn the art of war, they will be helpless.

Politicians are enormously smart and rational. They don't have the same interests as businessmen ... But a man rises to the top of the United States. He's clawed his way out of 330 million people. OK. He didn't do that because he was dumb, or lucky, or something like that. He understands power. And he understands how to take it. And he understands how to keep it.

With the decline of American interests in the outcome of this region, there is no glue holding it together. And the countries in this region are invented ... The last guarantor of the region's borders was the United States, and the US has basically said "the hell with it." What you're really having is the collapse of nation-states because they're not nations. They're only states.

It has always struck me as the world's great fortune that the two great superpowers were the United States and the Soviet Union, who managed the Cold War with meticulous care in retrospect. Imagine the European diplomats of 1914 or 1938 armed with nuclear weapons. It is easy to believe they would not have been as cautious.