No matter who is president of Indonesia from August, Jakarta will have to come to grips with the problems on its periphery as political issues, not just as security problems.

Iraq was at core a war of choice, and extraordinarily expensive by every measure - human life, impact on our military, dollars, diplomatically.

Save your breath. The president has already made up his mind.

To the neorealist.

We cannot sustain this degree of guns, this amount of butter and this level of taxes.

The upper hand is with those who are pushing regime change rather than those who are advocating more diplomacy.

There's a daisy chain that stems from the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found.

I do think there's been progress in some areas. In the last four years, for example, I think the world has become a tougher place for terrorists to operate in.

The biggest thing these appointments tell you about the direction of U.S. foreign policy is that there is no direction.