A strong State Department to me means a corps of career officials who believe that their job is to advocate America's interests and who are trained in effective advocacy, not schooled in accommodation.

I think some of this fascination with the 'Arab Spring' is just a grand experiment with Israel's survival.

It's not natural disasters that are to blame for the deprivation of the North Korean people, but the failed policies of Kim Jong Il.

A strong State Department to me means a corps of career officials who believe that their job is to advocate America's interests and who are trained in effective advocacy, not schooled in accommodation.

Let me ask, who died and made him king? Who gave him the authority to endanger 300 million Americans? That's not the way it works, and if he thinks he can get away with that, he's got another think coming.

The culture of the State Department is very negative towards a conservative foreign policy. And the model that we all have, of civil servants as neutral careerists who carry out the policy of the elected president, doesn't work nearly the way it should in the State Department. So that there are many people who want to be good civil servants, who want to try and carry out these policies, but are afraid to do so. And I'm not even counting the very small number of conservatives in the State Department who are genuinely at risk.

I think it's critical that we return national security issues to the center of the overall political debate in America.