Well, on the American side, every new administration has to cut its teeth in a crisis, because before a crisis, you don't really know what your various subordinates are thinking under stress.

The important thing is to do the right thing. Then credibility will follow.

What is applicable is to understand that first of all China has undergone a huge revolution in the last years. Anyone who saw China as I did in 1971 - and for that matter even in 1979, because not much had changed between 1971 and 1979 - and sees China today, knows one is in a different economic system.

Intelligence is not all that important in the exercise of power, and is often, in point of fact, useless.

Create the impression of endless willingness to compromise and you almost invite deadlines. That's the challenge we now have in North Korea and have had in North Korea for 10 years. In this sense, diplomacy and foreign policy and other elements of political activity have to be closely linked and have to be understood by the negotiators

I think China will do nothing to obstruct it, and they probably will go along with it.

In my view, there's no doubt that the Soviets had infinitely greater trouble holding their structure together than we did.