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So I thought when I was in office that we were not doing nearly enough to respect China and Russia.

And the reason I disagreed with the crowd, so to speak, through the 2000 to 2010 period,

was that it had become clear to me, I think, before that it was clear to many people.

That China and Russia, the China and Russia we'd hoped for in the 90s, wasn't happening.

And that we needed to be able to counter them, and they were a higher end enemy than the Taliban or al-Qaeda.

Second, we'd spent all that time and energy on Iraq and Afghanistan, and ultimately Syria.

And was that a distraction? Yeah, I was.

So you put those two things together in China and Russia weren't getting the attention they needed to from the defense squad,

for about 10 years. And one of the things I did in all three of my jobs was try to restore that attention to China and Russia.

I think that's now more prevalent in the country, which is a good thing, prevalent in Washington, which is a good thing.

But it was 10 years ago.

...