Good policy depends on the patient accumulation of nuances; care has to be taken that individual moves are orchestrated into a coherent strategy. Only rarely do policy issues appear in terms of black and white. More usually they depend on shades of interpretation; significant policy deviations begin as minor departures whose effect becomes apparent only as they are projected into the future...

In foreign policy the most important initiatives require painstaking preparation; results take months or years to emerge. Success requires a sense of history, an understanding of manifold forces not within our control, and a broad view of the fabric of events...

Foreign policy. . . is the mastery of nuance; it requires the ability to relate disparate elements into a pattern.

Henry A. Kissinger