White House staff are meant to coordinate and set policy, not carry it out.
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.
There's a pattern in Bush 43's presidency of being attracted to the big and the bold, and my whole reading of him is that he was instinctively uncomfortable with what you might call a modulated foreign policy - a foreign policy of adjustment, of degree.
When great powers fade, as they inevitably must, it's normally for one of two reasons. Some powers exhaust themselves through overreach abroad, underinvestment at home, or a mixture of the two. This was the case for the Soviet Union. Other powers lose their privileged position with the emergence of new, stronger powers.
Donald Trump's United States is not isolationist. He has authorized the use of limited military force against the Syrian government in a manner his predecessor rejected.
Trump is the first post-World War II American president to view the burdens of world leadership as outweighing the benefits.
What is obvious is that Donald Trump is comfortable with an approach to running his presidency based on what worked for him in the private sector.
Any time you use military force, you have got to have a clear purpose that military forces can achieve.
Trade accords had been a staple of the post-World War II world, providing a mechanism for economic growth, development, and association with friends and allies, and a means of reining in would-be adversaries who otherwise would have little incentive to act with restraint.
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.
Vietnam was not a war of choice the United States had to fight. It was clearly not central.
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.
To be sure, many of the Sykes-Picot borders reflected deals cut in Europe rather than local demographic or historical realities. But that hardly makes the Middle East unique: Most borders around the world owe their legacy less to thoughtful design or popular choice than to some mixture of violence, ambition, geography, and chance.
There is no way to know for certain what accounts for North Korean decisionmaking, given how closed a country it is.
No amount of sanctioning will persuade North Korea to give up nuclear weapons, nor will China step up and solve the problem for us.
How can we pressure China on North Korea if China's one of the two largest holders of American debt?
Our inability to govern ourselves at home, to deal with everything from infrastructure to our debt to tax policy, is reducing the appeal of the American model.
I did not believe in the Iraq war.
Campaigning and governing are two very different activities, and there is no reason to assume that how Trump conducted the former will dictate how he approaches the latter.
