 Nowadays, many Americans say that my country can no longer afford to play a leadership role in the world. And I agree with that. In one respect, the U.S. can't afford to play that role if we don't fix our economy. But the key to doing that is making the right changes at home, not to withdraw from the world. In fact, I would maintain we can't afford to withdraw no matter how much natural gas we produce, no matter how comfortable we are at home. The world is still a dangerous place and one that we need to worry about. Back in 2012, there was a series of debates among the Republican candidates, which were not memorable for very much, but I remember one thing. One of the candidates was asked what he would do if he got a call at three o'clock in the morning. I don't know why we have this image in the United States that the President gets urgent calls always at three o'clock in the morning. Sometimes they come at noon. But anyway, you get that three o'clock in the morning call and they tell you that one of Pakistan's nuclear weapons has fallen into the hands of terrorists. That question is a very tough one to answer, and the answer would clearly depend on the specific circumstances. But the very fact that it's not an implausible question demonstrates, I believe, just that one of many reasons why we can't afford to withdraw from the world. In a situation like that, we must be able to act. Indeed, we need, if at all possible, to act ahead of time to prevent such a situation from arising. And if we do need to act, we will almost certainly need friends to help us. Obviously, and you're hearing from someone who's had a long experience with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there is no question that two long controversial wars have been painful. As wars inevitably are, and they have made Americans question our role in the world. For almost three years in Syria, the U.S. seems to have been paralyzed by a fear that if we did anything at all, that would somehow lead to another Iraq-type involvement. That fear is understandable, but not every situation needs to repeat Iraq or Afghanistan. Had we acted earlier, the U.S. could have made a big difference in Syria. Simply with more energetic support for the moderate elements of the Syrian opposition. That would not have meant going to war on their behalf. But it would have meant giving them financial support, medical support, and yes, weapons and training as well. I believe we repeated a different mistake in Syria. The mistake of Bosnia in the 1990s, and the mistake in Iraq in 1991 at the end of the First Gulf War. In Bosnia for three years under two American presidents, first President George H.W. Bush, and then President Bill Clinton. The United States enforced an arms embargo on the Bosnians, who were the victims of aggression, and who needed weapons to defend themselves. That prolonged the conflict and increased the bloodshed. Some estimates are that 200,000 people died in Bosnia during those three years, and it made the aftermath much worse than it might have been if the conflict had ended sooner. Today Bosnia is at least at peace, but it's pretty much a broken country, partitioned in all but name. Better than the war, but if the war had ended much earlier, we could have a different story. And I think that so many of the bad consequences that people feared would happen if we armed the Syrian opposition, have happened instead because we did not. Having done practically nothing while a bloody conflict raged for three years, it is now metastasized into what we see today. A threat that some judge to be even more dangerous than Al Qaeda was. That's just one of many dangers in the world, and I think we would do better to deal with them than to run away from them.