American presidents get to make lots of choices, with one critical exception: what awaits them in the in-box on top of the desk in the Oval Office.

Bad situations can always get worse.

Indeed, the big U.S. error after 9/11 was to treat Pakistan as if it were an ally. With an ally, it is possible to assume a large degree of policy overlap. With Pakistan, no such assumption can be made.

It is true that the U.S. could and should have been more generous as Russia made its painful transition to a market economy in the 1990s.

Russia may well be willing to stop interfering in Eastern Ukraine in exchange for a degree of sanctions relief if it could be assured that ethnic Russians there would not face reprisals.

The rise of populism is in part a response to stagnating incomes and job loss, owing mostly to new technologies but widely attributed to imports and immigrants.

The vote in the United Kingdom in favor of leaving the E.U. attested to the loss of elite influence.

The United States, working closely with the United Kingdom and others, established the liberal world order in the wake of World War II. The goal was to ensure that the conditions that had led to two world wars in 30 years would never again arise.

It is important to signal that opposition to the use of any weapon of mass destruction is both deep and broad.

Trump's foreign policy is not so much immoral as it is amoral.

The abolition of the presidential term limit and President Xi Jinping's concentration of power have come as an unwelcome surprise to many.

Americans were happy to buy vast quantities of relatively inexpensive Chinese manufactured goods, demand for which provided jobs for the tens of millions of Chinese who moved from poor agricultural areas to new or rapidly expanding cities.

Terrorists continue to be outliers with limited appeal at best.

The horror and tragedy that was 9/11 did many things; one of them was to galvanize this country and much of the world against terrorists and those who support them.

No one pursuing reasonable goals and who is prepared to compromise can argue that terrorism is his or his group's only option.

Generically, wars in necessity are wars where, I think, the vital interest of the nation are at stake, in which there are no viable alternatives to the use of force.

An open, market-oriented, and peaceful Iraq could also advance reform and growth across the entire region.

The Trump administration has been characterized by adhocracy during its initial months. The initiative limiting immigration is a case in point. The new policy was not vetted fully within the administration - indeed, then-Acting Attorney General Sally Yates first read the decision after the text of the new executive order was published online.

The U.S. does not want to live under the shadow of a North Korea that possesses long-range missiles capable of delivering nuclear payloads to American cities. At the same time, the U.S. has no appetite for a war that would prove costly by every measure.

Middle East history is replete with examples of missed and lost chances to make peace.

Terrorism is a decentralized phenomenon - in its funding, planning, and execution.

Terrorism needs to be de-legitimized in the way that slavery has been. Doing so will make governments and individuals think twice before becoming a party to terrorism; it should also make it less difficult to garner support for international action against those who nevertheless carry it out.

America's armed forces are an essential background to much of what the U.S. accomplishes internationally.

Modern terrorism is too destructive to be tolerated, much less supported.