If we slide into a pattern of just thinking about today, we'll end up reacting to yesterday instead of shaping something more constructive in the world.

The Soviet Union's termination, which brought to an end the bipolar world, ushered in an era of U.S. hegemony. Hegemony, however, should not be confused with omnipotence. Hegemony is not omnipotence but is certainly preponderance.

We don't have a public that really understands the world anymore, and in the age of complexity, that problem becomes much more difficult.

Americans don't learn about the world; they don't study world history, other than American history in a very one-sided fashion, and they don't study geography.

World War II and the ensuing Cold War compelled the United States to develop a sustained commitment to Western Europe and the Far East.

War on terrorism defines the central preoccupation of the United States in the world today, and it does reflect in my view a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy of the world's first superpower, of a great democracy, with genuinely idealistic traditions.