A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.

John Paul II was one of the greatest men of the last century. Perhaps the greatest.

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

Don't be too ambitious. Do the most important thing you can think of doing every year and then your career will take care of itself.

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.

Taiwan will probably not declare independence. The question isn't independence. The issue is whether Taiwan will declare itself as a sovereign separate state. That will start a huge crisis if that happens.

I do not believe that Putin intends to leave office in a Cold War atmosphere with the United States.