Other Visiting Voices at RAND
There are two megatrends we see today. One is in the area of economy and technology, where we see integration; we see globalization. On the other hand, in the political realm, we see disintegration. What we see in the Middle East is very similar to what happened to the Soviet bloc in the '80s. We see a complete disintegration of the Arab world, whereby the nation-state is not any more the basic political unit.
— Daniel Ayalon, Israel's deputy minister of foreign affairs, on geopolitical trends
The highly enriched uranium that used to be in warheads pointed at the United States in Ukrainian missiles was taken out and shipped to the United States, where it was blended down into fuel that you could use in nuclear power reactors. Today, 20 percent of the electricity in the United States comes from nuclear power. Half of that 20 percent — so 10 percent of the power in the United States — comes from highly enriched uranium that was once part of nuclear warheads aimed at the United States.
— Philip Taubman, talking about his new book, The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb
Ladies and gentlemen, I do not promise you paradise. I do not promise perfection by week's end. But I do offer this final closing thought: Never in the history of the human race, since Ug and Thug first agreed 40,000 years ago to share a cave and establish some sort of community, has a criminal enterprise been able to succeed against the consensus, will, and desire of a society and a community determined not to let them succeed.
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