"The whole world has become a crowded theater. You could say something here in New York and have it be heard in Afghanistan and potentially trigger riots and it may be something that to you was innocent or was in jest or was satirical and it's taken out of context. I mean, a joke, a tweet or a blog post can make it halfway around the world before the context gets its boots on."

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We got the Iran sanctions done. We got an agreement by Russia to allow us to use Afghanistan to transit supplies for our forces. We got a Security Council resolution on Libya. We got Russia into the WTO to bring in to it a rules-based trading system. All of those things were in our interest. The point is not whether we should work with Russia. The point is whether we should sacrifice other important interests to do so.

— Philip Gordon