I will always be an advocate in terms of wars of necessity. I am just much more cautious on wars of choice.

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 think that Vladimir Putin has decided, in a very strategic way, to turn the tables and do everything in his power to, as we've described Russian elections as illegitimate, to try and communicate to the rest of the world that Western elections are illegitimate. And it's not just us, we know that now. It's Germany, it's France, it's a number of other countries.

We should never lose sight of the ethos that has made the Marine Corps - where 'every Marine is a rifleman' - one of America's cherished institutions and one of the world's most feared and respected fighting forces

Most governments lie to each other. That's the way business gets done.

I think, on the foreign policy side, that there is a need for disruption. We've had three administrations follow a pretty consistent policy toward North Korea, and it really hasn't gotten us anywhere.

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