While analogies are useful, however, they can also be misleading. They smuggle in assumptions that can be wrong.

First of all, the world criticizes American foreign policy because Americans criticize American foreign policy. We shouldn't be surprised about that. Criticizing government is a God-given right - at least in democracies.

Great wars can only be fought by great powers.

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

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.

People do not change when you tell them they should; they change when they tell themselves they must.

The less oil the world uses, the less important the region that has so much of it becomes.