America's armed forces are an essential background to much of what the U.S. accomplishes internationally.
The U.S. does not want to live under the shadow of a North Korea that possesses long-range missiles capable of delivering nuclear payloads to American cities. At the same time, the U.S. has no appetite for a war that would prove costly by every measure.
Trump's foreign policy is not so much immoral as it is amoral.
In a world in which the United States does less, whatever set of calculations, other countries will tend to calculate - to move in one of two ways. Either they will assuage or, to use a more loaded term, appease the strongest power in the neighborhood with all the consequences of that, or they will determine to take matters into their own hands.
American presidents get to make lots of choices, with one critical exception: what awaits them in the in-box on top of the desk in the Oval Office.
Nationalism is a tool increasingly used by leaders to bolster their authority, especially amid difficult economic and political conditions.
Success in foreign policy, as in carpentry, requires the right tools for the job.
I believe in diplomacy; I don't believe in talking to... that talking to Iran somehow constitutes a concession or a favour.
Terrorism is a decentralized phenomenon - in its funding, planning, and execution.
Homegrown terrorists are a real problem for even the most modern, democratic societies.
I tend to be one of those who does not equate democratization with the holding of elections. The emphasis ought to be on such things as rule of law, economic reform, and promotion of a free media - in short, essentially independent, free institutions.
The decision to attack Iraq in March 2003 was discretionary; it was a war of choice.
Americans never would alter the way entitlement programs are funded or education administered without serious study and widespread debate.
For President Bush, the first, the 41st president, George Herbert Walker Bush, I spent all 4 years of his presidency on the staff for the National Security Council.
The Internet, one of the great inventions of the modern Western world, has shown itself to be a weapon that can be used to incite and train those who wish to cause harm to that world.
Indeed, in foreign policymaking, inconsistency is often a virtue. I speak not of principles but of policy.
Russia may well be willing to stop interfering in Eastern Ukraine in exchange for a degree of sanctions relief if it could be assured that ethnic Russians there would not face reprisals.
The first Iraq War was one of necessity because vital U.S. interests were at stake, and we reached the point where no other national-security instruments were likely to achieve the necessary goal, which was the reversal of Saddam Hussein's invasion and occupation of Kuwait.
It is true that the U.S. could and should have been more generous as Russia made its painful transition to a market economy in the 1990s.
Any time you use military force, you have got to have a clear purpose that military forces can achieve.
