The history of things that didn't happen has never been written.

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.

When I became security advisor, I became familiar with the so-called SIOP war plans, I called in Secretary McNamara and asked him what they were hiding from me, because I couldn't believe that the National policy would foresee such a level of destructiveness.

Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered.

For the Soul of France is masterful history, brilliantly researched, and hard to put down.

It is one of history's ironies that Communism, advertised as a classless society, tended to breed a privileged class of feudal proportions.

I don't consider China a communist state, no. I know that sounds paradoxical, but it's my view.