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" What frustrates U.S. officials is that China sometimes seems more comfortable accommodating a strong United States, as it did in past decades, than partnering with an America that's less dominant. "

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" The truth is, as you know, people like us look at what's happening in the world, and then we project it forward. We think, 'If I know A and B, then I've got to know that C and D are coming,' and that's kind of the way it's been with my fiction. "

David Ignatius

Think

Truth

People

" The CIA in real life, we know, is looking for new kinds of cover. It's looking for new platforms, as they like to say, and it's trying to use the revolution in communications technology, the ability to use all sorts of corporate entities in ways that are hard to detect to get our spies in the places where they need to be. "

" The attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi has become a political football in the presidential campaign, with all the grandstanding and misinformation that entails. "

" Intelligence services exist to do things that are illegal abroad. They exist to tell lies. "

" Fear brings out the best in some people and the worst in others. It's a test of character, for individuals and nations. "

" Apple chief executive Tim Cook is such a respected figure that it's easy to overlook the basic problem with his argument about encryption: Cook is asserting that a private company and the interests of its customers should prevail over the public's interest as expressed by our courts. "

" 2011 was a year in which events rarely turned out as predicted, and when much of the world seemed shrouded in turmoil and uncertainty. It was difficult for government analysts back in Washington to know just where they were on the map, let alone where they were heading. "

" Politicians need to rethink their reflexive invocations of the Second Amendment and the idea that the gun lobby is too powerful to challenge. "

" U.S. power flows from our unmatched military might, yes. But in a deeper way, it's a product of the dominance of the U.S. economy. "

" We haven't usually had to face the extreme questions about liberty and order because we're not a nation of extremists. We love freedom and good government both. "

" Europeans don't like to talk about intelligence, and they often pretend their countries don't spy. "

" Making economic policy isn't a popularity contest, especially when financial markets are in a panic. "

" Empty political space will be filled by extremists unless the United States and its allies build strong local forces that can suppress terrorist groups and warlords both. When the U.S. creates such local forces, it must be persistent. If it withdraws from these efforts, as America did in Iraq in 2011, it invites mayhem. "

" Moscow and Washington have evolved a delicate process for 'de-confliction' in the tight Syrian airspace, where accidents or miscommunication could be disastrous. "

" American politics, like most things, is a story of what statisticians describe as the reversion to the mean. "

David Ignatius

Mean

Story

" Big mistakes were made in Benghazi, and people should be held accountable. But the brave officers who staff American posts in crisis zones know how dangerous the work is. "

" As Obama prepares to begin the last year of his presidency, he stands in an unusual position on the national stage: He is the rationalist, a creature of intellect rather than emotion. "

" Things felt pretty crazy on earth in 1969, but the cosmos was friendly. Astronauts had round-trip tickets; they got home. "

" Helping Wall Street regain confidence and stability was the last thing an angry public wanted in 2009 after the markets crashed. But without such support, markets can buckle and liquidity can disappear - often for decades, as has been the case in Japan. "

" Hedge-fund managers make too much money relative to their social utility. I wish their rewards were a bit closer to those of, say, schoolteachers. "

" World War II provides a string of celebrated cases of deception and manipulation. "

" European Muslims need to feel ownership of security, rather than viewing the police as an occupying army. "

" The Founding Fathers' instructions were clear: The right to free speech includes bad speech; it means tolerance of ideas that many find obnoxious. "

" When historians look at the Obama presidency, they're likely to credit him especially for doing the politically unpopular things that were needed in 2009 to salvage the financial wreckage. "

" Prominent scientists have become increasingly convinced that the connection between carbon emissions and rising temperatures is real, but skeptics have whole truckloads of studies to demonstrate the opposite. "

" During an economic crisis, what matters is that the government keeps its foot on the accelerator. "

" Training a reliable military force that adheres to Western norms and standards is the work of a generation, not a few months. "

" Politicians often call for sanctions as a way of sounding tough when they don't want to take riskier measures. "

" The European Union needs to reinvent its security system. It needs to break the stovepipes that prevent sharing information, enforcing borders and protecting citizens. "

" If you want better behavior from bankers, then make their financial incentives more like those in the hedge-fund world - where managers have 'skin in the game,' and their net worth is tied to their long-term performance. "