John Lewis Gaddis

“I think the way to think about the impact of Hiroshima is to think about it as a sudden shift in the balance of power.”

“I don't think there is necessarily a contradiction between being a hegemonic power on the one hand and functioning multilaterally on the other.”

“Second terms in the White House open the way for second thoughts.”

“It is worth starting with visions, though, because they establish hopes and fears. History then determines which prevail.”

“George W. Bush has much to evaluate: he has presided over the most sweeping redesign of U.S. grand strategy since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.”

“The United States came out of the 1990s, if anything, in an even greater position of hegemony and preeminence than it was at the beginning of the 1990s.”

“The doctrine of preemption has a long and distinguished history in the history of American foreign policy.”

“If there is one great power, and the great power has taken upon itself the right to preempt and is choosing for itself when and in what circumstances it's going to do that, obviously it leads people in the rest of the world to wonder how far this doctrine extends.”