The relationship has truly been fine. Our defense cooperation and intelligence sharing, which has been substantial in both directions, and our work on anti-missile and anti-rocket defense have been very good. And this work continues under Chuck Hagel and President Obama – and I’m pleased with that. That doesn’t mean we can’t have differences of opinion on Iran.

No matter what the aggressor intends to do, when the world is truly united, it is then the world, not the aggressor, determines how events develop.

It is a grave indictment of this international community that we can spend so much money on war, in fact trillions are spending on war, but we cannot support action that needs to be taken to meet the most basic needs of billions of people in the world, needs such as addressing hunger, health, empowering woman and making sure that there is development in countries that are vulnerable.

So the 20th century taught the world not to use nuclear weapons and not to proliferate. This is not a good strategy because recent history has shown that wars could erupt with equal devastation.

In the past, human progress had to come at the cost of the environment. If we wanted energy, we had to burn wood or we had to burn fossil fuels. If we wanted to grow more food, we had to expand farmland, often at the cost of forests. But technology and innovation means we're very quickly decoupling these impacts, such that this conflict is no longer true.

[Angela Merkel] showed what can be achieved when politicians take the right course of action and work to find solutions to the world’s challenges rather than simply shift responsibility to others.

We need a revolution in how we think — one that addresses and neutralizes the instinct to be judgmental and dismissive in the first place. And that must come from within.

The hour has come for a new generation to lead the Democratic Congress that I so deeply respect.

The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.