Leadership is absolutely vital if there are comparable countries which can affect the security of the world you live in. Between Lincoln and Roosevelt’s time, America was protected by huge oceans and, in practice, by the British navy. Today, it’s different, and the obsession of the Obama administration has been for retrenchment.
Henry KissingerI have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.
Desmond TutuFor a sitting U.S. president to see our allies as freeloaders is nuts.
Jim MattisNo matter how hard we might wish, we will not be able to transform China’s behavior overnight.
Madeleine AlbrightWar is not an exercise of the will directed at an inanimate matter.
Carl von ClausewitzMore understand China, then more people will have interest in China and more people will come to China to visit us because I am a tourist ambassador.
Jackie ChanThe only defensible war is a war of defense.
Gilbert K. ChestertonIsrael is a pretty crazy state.
Noam ChomskyOther than being crazy enough to press a button, there is nothing that Putin can do militarily to fundamentally alter American interests.
Joe BidenWhen I was 18, I went to the Soviet Union. I kept hearing that America was planning to bomb them – lots of bombs were going to come down on these people. I went there not knowing anything, except that I thought the whole thing was stupid and that I wanted to see who these people were that we were going to bomb.
Alice WalkerThe U.S. and its allies will do anything they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world.
Noam ChomskyEverybody has forgotten that Russia helped start the Second World War.
Ray BradburyFoe means enemy. Now, will we have differences of opinion with the Russians? Yes. Will they get mad at us from time to time, and we get mad at them? That’s part of the normal diplomatic relations.
Colin PowellLaw is always better than war.
Brian EnoWar is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.
Carl von ClausewitzA lot of people think international relations is like a game of chess. But it’s not a game of chess, where people sit quietly, thinking out their strategy, taking their time between moves. It’s more like a game of billiards, with a bunch of balls clustered together.
Madeleine AlbrightThere is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.
Niccolo MachiavelliI see Libya as a member of the Non-Aligned Movement and a sovereign State of the nearly 200 members of the United Nations.
Fidel CastroInternational summits and organisations like WTO take decisions, which will bind us, and if we are not present in such summits, we may be hurt by the decisions taken.
Narendra ModiA war is a horrible thing, but it’s also a unifier of countries.
Clint EastwoodThe idea that putting Americans ‚first‘ requires a withdrawal from the world is simply wrongheaded because a retreat would achieve exactly the opposite for our citizens.
Colin PowellWe prefer world law in the age of self-determination to world war in the age of mass extermination.
John F. KennedyI know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert EinsteinPutin sought to keep Ukraine weak through corruption.
Joe BidenDomestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.
John F. KennedyFor somebody who loves foreign policy, being Secretary is the best job in the world – but it doesn’t happen twice.
Madeleine AlbrightFollowing the missile crisis, detente started to gain ground between the United States and the Soviet Union, so the international political climate improved after that.
Fidel CastroNATO was constructed on the – with the reason, whether one believes it or not, that it was going to defend Western Europe from Russian assault. Once the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse, that reason was gone. So, first question: why does NATO exist?
Noam ChomskyJapan is an important ally of ours. Japan and the United States of the Western industrialized capacity, 60 percent of the GNP, two countries. That’s a statement in and of itself.
Dan QuayleI don’t see any possibility of Britain and the U.S. allowing a sovereign independent Iraq; that’s almost inconceivable.
Noam ChomskyWe should pass the U.N.’s Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism. At least it will clearly establish whom you view as a terrorist and whom you don’t. We need to delink terrorism from religion – to isolate terrorists who use this interchange of arguments between terrorism and religion.
Narendra ModiThe Bush Administration’s failure to be consistently involved in helping Israel achieve peace with the Palestinians has been both wrong for our friendship with Israel, as well as badly damaging to our standing in the Arab world.
Barack ObamaUnlike Europe, China can’t be intimidated. Europe backs down if the United States looks at it the wrong way. But China, they’ve been there for 3,000 years and are paying no attention to the barbarians and don’t see any need to.
Noam ChomskyFifty years of isolating Cuba had failed to promote democracy, setting us back in Latin America. That’s why we restored diplomatic relations, opened the door to travel and commerce, and positioned ourselves to improve the lives of the Cuban people.
Barack ObamaWar is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.
Carl von ClausewitzI have spoken to Chinese leaders occasionally on human rights, but I’ve always done it in private.
Henry KissingerI’m doing more of my U.N. work and doing the African Union Summit and things like that.
Angelina JolieDiplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it… You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week.
Will RogersEvery nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.
Arthur SchopenhauerChina and the U.S. need each other very badly. Yes, we should argue about some things, but it’s not an ‚us versus them,‘ it’s an ‚us and them‘ type scenario.
Bill GatesForeign policy is like human relations, only people know less about each other.
Joe BidenLet us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.
Alexander HamiltonI believe mutual respect for one another and cooperation should be the basis for relationships with foreign nations.
Narendra ModiIt cannot be too often stressed that Israel had no credible pretext for its 2008-9 attack on Gaza, with full U.S. support and illegally using U.S. weapons.
Noam ChomskyWe make war that we may live in peace.
AristotleThere are nuclear-weapons-free zones in several parts of the world already, except that they’re not implemented fully, because the U.S. won’t allow it.
Noam ChomskyNo nation should threaten its neighbors by massing troops along the border.
Joe BidenDisarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.
Dwight D. EisenhowerThere are lots of countries that are having these kinds of internal civil wars in other parts of the world and nobody is talking about intervening.
Colin PowellIn much of the world, there is a sense of an ultra-powerful CIA manipulating everything that happens, such as running the Arab Spring, running the Pakistani Taliban, etc. That is just nonsense.
Noam ChomskyGeography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies. Those whom God has so joined together, let no man put asunder.
John F. KennedyFor diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible – and no one can now doubt the word of America.
George W. BushWe can not play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent.
Ronald ReaganPutin goes to bed at night knowing he can break all the rules, and the West will follow all the rules.
Jim MattisWe are moving towards a world that is reordering itself and that may appear more ordered at some periods of time, but I see no sign that we are moving towards a world order in my definition of it – namely, a system which is accepted, which is internalized by the majority of the key participants.
Henry KissingerThe United States prefers that Iraq meet its obligations voluntarily, yet we are prepared for the alternative.
George W. BushU.S. analysts estimate that Russian military expenditures have tripled during the Bush-Putin years, in large measure a predicted reaction to the Bush administration’s militancy and aggressiveness.
Noam ChomskyIsrael is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.
Alice WalkerThe many questions about the bombing of Yugoslavia by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation – meaning primarily the United States – come down to two fundamental issues: ‚What are the accepted and applicable ‚rules of world order,‘ and how do these apply in the case of Kosovo?‘
Noam ChomskyUnless India stands up to the world, no one will respect us. In this world, fear has no place. Only strength respects strength.
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam