Putin needs to understand and feel in his gut that if the Chechens get a nuclear bomb, they're going to Moscow first, they're not coming to New York.

Putin needs to understand and feel in his gut that if the Chechens get a nuclear bomb, they're going to Moscow first, they're not coming to New York.

Given that the Al Qaeda core has been significantly destroyed or disabled, and that the leadership seems to be essentially on the run or in hiding, it would lead me to think that probably it is one of the less centralized groups that might be the greatest danger.

When we succeeded in winning the Cold War, escaping a nuclear Armageddon that could have killed us all, the U.S. inevitably had a serious problem about an encore: what now for our place in the world?

The fact that there are now many entities that may have some loose affiliation with a former core Al Qaeda - or who have decided to fashion themselves as an affiliate or follower in the Al Qaeda jihadist tradition - as well as groups that are just inspired by the concept that they could also be the perpetrators of mass killing, means that there is a spectrum of threats.

Terrorism is really the only existential threat to America as we know it - as a free country that plays a leading role in the world.

And I hope that we can learn the lessons of the past in looking at the current challenge that China poses to a ruling America.