I cannot understand how something as ubiquitous as war can simply be dismissed as pathological. It is not clear to me that it is an unspeakable evil. If it is, I need proof of it.

War to me is very much like sex. You can develop a theory that says sex is primarily for the exchange of genetic material, or that it's a celebration of life, or you can make up 50,000 theories about why human beings have sex, all of which are in some sense true, all of which by themselves miss the point. Because the answer is extraordinarily complex. It may be for fun, it may be for reproduction, for financial reasons, any number of things.

By the 20th century, war ceased to be an encounter between two armies. It became an encounter between two societies, because a factory worker producing a gun or a bomb is as deadly as a pilot.

I cannot understand how something as ubiquitous as war can simply be dismissed as pathological. It is not clear to me that it is an unspeakable evil. If it is, I need proof of it.

One of the great famines in human history took place during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. [At the same time] Western journalists were reporting how marvelously Chinese society was working. We know so little [about what happens in China].

The first thing you have to do is understand what success looks like. And to understand what success looks like you have to understand the intent. If you understand that intent is to make sure the sea lines are secure, then suddenly bombing Kosovo makes sense, because you don't want Serbia to reemerge as a major power.

Assad's mother was a terror. He was terrified of her and she kept saying to him, you're not like your father. That's interesting, but it's useless information. It doesn't tell me anything about how the first and second armored brigades are going to operate.