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.

Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." [...] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I'm afraid to say things like that.

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.

Donald Trump is a phenomenon that foreign countries haven't seen.

The art of good foreign policy is to understand and to take into consideration the values of a society, to realize them at the outer limit of the possible.

If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent.

The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each side should know that frequently uncertainty, compromise, and incoherence are the essence of policymaking. Yet each tends to ascribe to the other a consistency, foresight, and coherence that its own experience belies. Of course, over time, even two armed blind men can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room.