Will not perhaps the temporal power of Islam return and with it the menace of an armed Mohammedan world, which will shake off the domination of Europeans - still nominally Christian - and reappear as the prime enemy of our civilization? The future always comes as a surprise, but political wisdom consists in attempting at least some partial judgment of what that surprise may be. And for my part I cannot but believe that a main unexpected thing of the future is the return of Islam.
The old world order changed when this war-storm broke. The old international order passed away as suddenly, as unexpectedly, and as completely as if it had been wiped out by a gigantic flood, by a great tempest, or by a volcanic eruption. The old world order died with the setting of that day's sun and a new world order is being born while I speak, with birth-pangs so terrible that it seems almost incredible that life could come out of such fearful suffering and such overwhelming sorrow.
The Cold War has ended. It's very simple. We are no longer living in a bipolar world. The chances that we will go to war with Russia are pretty much ended. Mutually Assured Destruction was a doctrine that worked very well for decades as a deterrent, but the world has fundamentally changed.
The Great Convergence: Asia, the West and the Logic of One World.
I think there has been a long-running notion in the West that Asia was a continent of people that were really conquerable. That people from Asia were weak, they were small in all ways - including physically small, geopolitically small, economically small - all of which are changing, of course.
A number of years ago, people were saying normal relationship with Cuba, what a bad and silly idea. They're Communists, they are our enemy. Well guess what? Change has come.
Twenty years ago, I said there was going to be something that would stop the Soviet Union from taking over the world. And now we see that the Soviet Union has been stopped, through its own disintegration.
Historically when there is a rising power like China, it has usually led to confrontations between the rising power and the existing dominant powers. And when you have a shift of the center of gravity of world affairs from the Atlantic to the Pacific, then you have an additional element.
We believe we are creating the beginning of a new world order coming out of the collapse of the US-Soviet antagonisms.
Without perestroika, the cold war simply would not have ended. But the world could not continue developing as it had, with the stark menace of nuclear war ever present.
I could see America playing a slightly smaller role in the Middle East but I would not see us abandoning the region and just say "Oh," like I said, "China, Russia, it's yours now. Global focus is just on our hemisphere." I don't see that happening.
Turkey is currently seeking to make itself more independent from Europe and is turning to the east. Is that in our interest? Does it help us bolster Western values in Turkey, or at least here at home? Or are we making ourselves weaker overall? At the same time, Turkey is violating our European moral concepts. It's a difficult conflict to endure, and it leads to necessary disputes and debates.
In 10 years, this sleepy Canada will be ripe for annexation - the farmers in Manitoba, etc., will demand it themselves. Besides, the country is half annexed already socially - hotels, newspapers, advertising, etc., all on the American pattern.
The Spanish government, having run completely out of money, secretly sold the Pyrenees to China, and is now separated from France only by traffic cones.
[the war in Iraq] "could have terrifically good effects troughout the Middle East
A superpower that no longer stands for anything, that no one believes in anymore, that is seen only as a bully, will fall despite its military might. If the Bush administration ever wanted to reflect on history, it might think about this.
With its declining population, with people moving out of the Far East, with an enormously powerful China in the east, I think the real destiny of Russia is to become closer to the West.
Us reaching the moon convinced Gorbachev and other leaders that the Soviet Union couldn't compete with the U.S., so they revised their agenda. But people have short memories.
I think President George W. Bush contributed very directly to the fact that the status of America as the world's only superpower lasted for 20 years at most.
The world has always been a dangerous place. Now it is dangerous in a different way, because the world order that we've known since the end of the Cold War has been radically transformed. All of the institutions that preserved peace and promoted global trade will be weaker - NATO, the EU, NAFTA - and US relationships with other countries will change, too.
If you get a President (Hillary) Clinton, you might well find, just as after Vietnam, that there is a retraction from Iraq and of American influence in the world. And in a couple of years the Europeans will be complaining about that too.
As America's nuclear strategic monopoly faded, the United States sought to create advantages elsewhere, notably in the peaceful cooperation between the United States and communist China under Deng Xiaoping.
I'm sure in a few years it will be unthinkable to say there were 20 years when we didn't recognize the People's Republic of China. And then we'll have to explain what the political constraints were and why it didn't happen earlier.
Politics abhors a vacuum, and Asian countries will gravitate towards China if U.S. influence is perceived as declining.
Venezuela is independent. It's diversifying its exports to a limited extent, instead of just being dependent on exports to the United States. And it's initiating moves toward Latin American integration and independence. It's what they call a Bolivarian alternative and the United States doesn't like any of that.
