'America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained....But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being....Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization....Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived external threat.'

--Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, 'The Grand Chessboard,' 1997.