Without investing in the rule of law for the poor, none of the other investments we make will be sustainable.

You could be in the United Nations office all night every night and still feel like you were not making a sufficient dent in the world's problems. I think the key is prioritization. But every job presents the tyranny of the inbox, of allowing the urgent to crowd out the important. So we have to have our lodestars.

As even a democracy like the United States has shown, waging war can benefit a leader in several ways: it can rally citizens around the flag, it can distract them from bleak economic times, and it can enrich a country's elites.

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.

We have an interest in combating tactics in war that are abhorrent and that only fuel terrorism because they incite people on the ground.

Without investing in the rule of law for the poor, none of the other investments we make will be sustainable.

I think we do have an interest in combating states that try to cross borders and steal parts of other people's country.