This country cannot afford to tear itself apart on a partisan basis on issues so vital to our national security.

Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered.

Every success is usually an admission ticket to a new set of decisions.

History is the memory of States.

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.

Tutelage is a comfortable relationship for the senior partner, but it is demoralizing in the long run. It breeds illusions of omniscience on one side and attitudes of impotent irresponsibility on the other.

Historically when there is a rising power like China, it has usually led to confrontations between the rising power and the existing dominant powers. And when you have a shift of the center of gravity of world affairs from the Atlantic to the Pacific, then you have an additional element.