The Eastern Europeans invested too many of their hopes in the notion that somehow or other the missile shield, even if directed at Iran, would reinforce their security links with the U.S. vis-à-vis Russia.

In the long run, global politics are bound to become increasingly uncongenial to the concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America is not only the first, as well as the only, truly global superpower, but it is also likely to be the very last.

An arc of crisis stretches along the shores of the Indian Ocean, with fragile social and political structures in a region of vital importance to us threatened with fragmentation. The resulting political chaos could well be filled by elements hostile to our values and sympathetic to our adversaries.

Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.

The United States is prepared really to be engaged in the quest to get people in the world the dignities that they seek today, the social justice that they feel they're deprived of, and the common solution to global problems.

The president has to project to the American people a sense of demanding idealism. Idealism which is not based in self-indulgence, but on self-denial and sacrifice, and on this such an America is going to be credible to the world.

One thing we know: Things will become even more destabilized if we don't step up Sino-U.S. cooperation. If you want to envisage a worst-case scenario, it is that Putin reveals step by step the inner weaknesses of the West, particularly in Europe, and the Chinese see in that an opportunity for emulation in the Far East, and then step by step through a gradual process we will be witnessing the emergence of Sino-Russian partnership in favor of a drastic change in the global balance of power.