The China of the 1970s was a communist dictatorship. The China of the twenty-first century is a one-party state without a firm ideological foundation, more similar to Mexico under the PRI than Russia under Stalin. But the measurement of the political and the economic evolution has not yet been completed, and is one of the weak points of the system.

Some of the critics viewed Vietnam as a morality play in which the wicked must be punished before the final curtain and where any attempt to salvage self-respect from the outcome compounded the wrong. I viewed it as a genuine tragedy. No one had a monopoly on anguish.

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

The enemies you make by taking a decided stand generally have more respect for you than the friends you make by being on the fence

Left to its own devices, the State Department machinery tends toward inertia rather than creativity; it is always on the verge of turning itself into an enormous cable machine.

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.

The challenge is whether China as a rising country, the United States as the superpower, can develop a cooperative relationship in this period before nationalism becomes so dominant in China as a substitute for communism, and a kind of self-righteous isolationism in this country that substitutes China for the Soviet Union.