Our nation is uniquely endowed to play a creative and decisive role in the new order which is taking form around us.

Access to natural resources can become a question of survival for many states.

Any international system must have two key elements for it to work. One, it has to have a certain equilibrium of power that makes overthrowing the system difficult and costly. Secondly, it has to have a sense of legitimacy.

The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.

The key decision for a statesman is whether to commit his nation or not. There is no middle course. Once a great nation commits itself, it must prevail. It will acquire no kudos for translating its inner doubts into hesitation.

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

Committees are consumers and sometimes sterilizers of ideas, rarely creators of them.