We first became conscious of the plane publicly on a Monday. I thought then by the weekend it would be done. But then the Chinese military, the defense minister made a statement saying that if there was no apology from the United States, the Chinese military and the Chinese people would never understand. No reference to the government or the Communist Party, and that obviously presented an internal problem to the Chinese leadership, which was travelling at that moment.

Accept everything about yourself - I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end - no apologies, no regrets.

It is frankly a mistake of amateurs to believe you can gain the upper hand in a diplomatic negotiation.

What political leaders decide, intelligence services tend to seek to justify.

I don't have a brief for every single reaction of Israel, but I think it is important that the political negotiations occur free of the threat of terrorism.

You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.

Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. History is a tale of efforts that failed, or aspirations that weren’t realized. So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy.