James Jones

It has been increasingly clear that with the Trump Administration's disdain for the very people necessary to implement your agenda, however, it would have been fruitless for me to continue in this role.

We can either properly train and equip our future warriors or maintain overly generous benefits for your military retirees who have many years in the workforce ahead. We cannot do both.

I actually really believed that we had turned the corner and that Russia had decided to be part of the Euro-Atlantic arc and not outside of it. But, one man changed that.

I don't believe NATO is obsolete, but I do think it has been neglected a little bit.

The biggest threat to radical ideology is a small schoolhouse educating a poor young girl.

You have two choices when it comes to these young people: get involved in their lives now or fight them later.

I cannot find a way in my own mind to deal with countering violent extremism without some kind of international plan

To our non-governmental organization (NGO) community, you can do just as much good as any battalion of soldiers.

Most of our friends and allies in the Gulf... still consider Iran to be an existential threat for the foreseeable future.

This agreement may paper over our concerns for a few years, but make no mistake about it. We are going to be fighting Iran for 25 years or 30 years.

One of the reasons that AFRICOM wound up in Stuttgart, Germany was that we refused to change the title 'combatant command.'

I do not think anybody has been able to show that yet, and I do not want us to go down that road again until somebody produces the data that showed it had an impact.

Until there is really a behavioral change at the leadership level in Iran, we should be very, very careful about what we buy into with them.

[NATO] should become more proactive . . .

I think it's possibly the beginning of the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. I think it is that serious. We just can't sit back and let this happen.

If EXIM Bank is shut down, and the United States leaves the field on export financing, such a vacuum would not only undermine U.S. business abroad and lose jobs at home, but undermine American influence and economic leadership at a time…

Mr. Putin's incursion in the Crimea is . . . about exercising political power through the control of energy, and about brandishing the threat of energy scarcity to intimidate and manipulate vulnerable populations.

If we want to make Mr. Putin's day and strengthen his hand, we should reject Keystone.

My definition of that condition is that a nation is in decline when it can no longer bring itself to do those things that deep down it knows it needs to do for its own good.

Energy leadership demonstrated by this country... will have significant ramifications for the rest of the century.

The Keystone pipeline has become a litmus test for how people will determine how the United States projects itself in the global energy arena.

The difference between Mr. Putin and us . . . is that he wields energy as a weapon to achieve his geostrategic goals, while we look to energy flow in free markets as a means of promoting international peace, prosperity, and economic…

Jobs. The Keystone pipeline will create 42,000 jobs.

This is an enormous opportunity that will prove to provide a truly historical and transformational change if done right.