"You can understand full well, or at least you should be able to understand full well, why the idea of bringing Ukraine up to their border really spooked them. I don’t understand why more Americans don’t understand that, it befuddles me. I think it has to do with the fact that Americans are not very good at putting themselves in the shoes of other countries. And you really, if you’re going to be a first class strategist in international politics, you have to be able to do that. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the other side and think about how they think, so you don’t make foolish mistakes."

"And I asked Mike what Putin’s response was to that. And Mike said that Putin didn’t believe it, but Mike believed that he should believe it, and that we could move NATO eastward to include Ukraine, and in the end, we’d get away with it because we are a benign hegemony, but the fact is that’s not what Putin saw. Putin saw us as a malign hegemony. And what Mike thinks, or any American thinks, doesn’t matter. What matters is what Putin thinks."

"Solution. I think for the foreseeable future, the animosity inside Israel towards the Palestinians is so great that it is impossible to move the Israelis in that direction. And the Israelis here are the key players more so than the Palestinians because it’s the Israelis who control Greater Israel. It’s the Israelis who you have to convince. Now, I want to be clear here. You also ultimately have to get around the fact that Hamas is not committed to a two-state solution. But I think that problem could be dealt with. It’s important to understand that Arafat and the PLO was once adamantly opposed to a two-state solution. But Arafat came around to understand that that was really the only hope for settling this. And he became a proponent of a two-state solution."