My one concern is that Hu Jintao may overestimate how much power China has in Pyongyang. They have - they do have influence, and they do have companies, and they do have economic relationships that could make life much more difficult in the north. Their balancing act is, "How much worse can we make it in the north without creating that which scares us more than anything, which is a collapse in the north." And then what happens to all those nuclear weapons. So they're going to work very hard to avoid that.

I've spent my entire adult life with the United States as a superpower and one that had no compunction about spending what it took to sustain that position. And it didn't have to look over its shoulder because our economy was so strong.

My last visit to China as secretary, January of 2011, I told President Hu Jintao, just like this, "President of the United States wanted me to tell you that we now consider North Korea a direct threat to the United States." And it had no effect whatsoever.

And so the greatest of American triumphs... became a peculiarly joyless victory. We had won the Cold War, but there would be no parades.

It's a very broad and not very well-disguised effort of Russians to create questions about the legitimacy of these Western elections. And, I think, this is very K.G.B.

I wish I could set deadlines for the Congress, but that's just not the way the Constitution is written.

America's civilian institutions of diplomacy and development have been chronically undermanned and underfunded for far too long.