American foreign policy, for all its shortcomings, has underpinned political stability around the world.

All policy is a matter of gains and losses, upsides and downsides.

American power confers benefits on most inhabitants of the planet, even on many who dislike it and some who actively oppose it, because the United States plays a major, constructive, and historically unprecedented role in the world.

Let me remind you all that the first task of American foreign policy is to reduce threats to the United States.

The world needs a strong America.

Great wars can only be fought by great powers.

Societies raise their grandest monuments to what their cultures value most highly. As the tallest buildings in a city noted for tall buildings, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were certainly monumental.