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

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

In the past when a country became as powerful as the United States, other countries would band together to clip its wings. But that isn't happening now and I don't think it's not going to happen, because other countries are not threatened by us, and they secretly appreciate the services that we provide, even if they don't usually say so.

Great wars can only be fought by great powers.

To call the American role in the world imperial was, for many who did so, a way of asserting that the United States was misusing its power beyond its borders and, in so doing, subverting its founding political principles within them.

If architecture is, as is sometimes said, music set in concrete, then football and basketball may be said to be creativity embodied in team sports.

The war on terror, I believe, will be waged by effective intelligence and police work and cruise missiles.