One of the things I love about negotiations is that you have to be able to play it like an orchestra, different instruments for different circumstances. There's sweetness, and encouragement, and cajoling. There's pressure, there's drama, there's ultimatums.

As Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak have repeatedly said, the intelligence and security relationship between the United States and Israel at present is unprecedented. It has never been stronger.

We must be honest in acknowledging that neither Germany nor the US has the luxury of assuming that we can skate by on half-measures in Afghanistan and Pakistan and not risk suffering the consequences.

The kids are Job One. So, to be quite candid, if they need me, I do my utmost to make sure I'm there.

What I learned is that policymakers have to force consideration of actions that may not have occurred to them at the time.

Peace, prosperity, and democracy cannot endure if imposed from the outside. We should cease to make false distinctions between peacekeeping and prevention; they are in fact inextricably linked.

There are no cookie-cutter solutions that you can apply from one circumstance to another. They're different. Our interests, as implicated, are different. The tools we have at our disposal are different.