Speeches

I’m here to speak to you about the United States, the Middle East, and China.

There comes a time in every man’s life when he has more to recall than to anticipate. Like everyone else in this room today, I keep striving to reach that point and falling short. I can’t help looking to the future, because that's where I’m going to spend the rest of my life.

It is a privilege to have been asked to join this discussion of Jacob Heilbrunn’s

It’s a pleasure to speak to this colloquium on “the use of the diplomatic instrument” of statecraft with China. The subject is timely. China, its international environment, and its relations with the United States are undergoing a sea change, and American diplomacy seems a bit adrift.

It’s a pleasure to be back among friends at a Pacific Pension Institute roundtable.  The last time we were together was in July 2011, when PPI met in Vancouver.  I spoke then about the shifting strategic geometry of Asia and its impact on the world order.

Many topics have been proposed for discussion in this session.  In the brief time available to me as a panelist, I would like to put forward some thoughts about the control of narrative and the manipulation of information as an essential element of modern warfare.  The Israelis call this “

I want to speak today about the Middle East in global, not just American perspective.  Of course, as I’m sure you know, it was Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, the great American naval strategist, who first called West Asia and North Africa “the Middle East.”  As he saw it, this was the regio

It’s an honor and pleasure to be with you once again in this very different part of China.  You wouldn’t know it to look at Macau’s malls, hotels, and casinos, but this is where contact between China and the modernizing West began.  The arrival here of Jorge Álvares in May 1513 began a compl

It’s an honor to have been asked once again to address this important annual conference on U.S.-Arab relations.  The theme of this year’s discussion is “transition within constancy.”  I confess I’m still trying to figure out what that means.  My best guess is that it’s something like “progre

It’s an honor to join the 27th class here tonight, and to meet some alumni of previous Seminar XXI sessions. I understand that participants in Seminar XXI spend a year rethinking national security problems, looking at them holistically and from more than an American perspective.