I think there are worse things than war. For example, injustice.

The Chinese central government will slowly and steadily lose authority while regional armies [gain power]. The Western powers are going to take sides to protect their investments - they have put billions of dollars into Shanghai. Their fear is that [these investments] are going to be expropriated by a warlord from the interior who will sweep down on Shanghai. They will try to form alliances with warlords to protect their concessions, and there will be a huge flow of weapons into China.

The Chinese have a long history of slaughtering each other without bothering their neighbors.

The important thing in war is that there is an element of rage, but you must remain very distant from it.

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.

Well the most likely emerging countries are Japan, Turkey, and Poland. So I would say Eastern Europe, the Middle East and a maritime war by Japan with the United States enjoying its own pleasures.

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.