Foreign Policy Quotes

“I was also part of a post-Vietnam generation that had learned to question its own government and saw how - from the rise of McCarthyism to support for South Africa's apartheid regime - Cold War thinking had often led America to betray its ideals. This awareness didn't stop me from believing we should contain the spread of Marxist totalitarianism. But it made me wary of the notion that good resided only on our side and bad on theirs, or that a people who'd produced Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky were inherently different from us. Instead, the evils of the Soviet system struck me as a variation on a broader human tragedy: The way abstract theories and rigid orthodoxy can curdle into repression. How readily we justify moral compromise and relinquish our freedoms. How power can corrupt and fear can compound and language can be debased. None of that was unique to Soviets or Communisists, I thought; it was true for all of us. The brave struggle of dissidents behind the Iron Curtain felt of a piece with, rather than distinct from, the larger struggle for human dignity taking place elsewhere in the world - including America.”
― Barack Obama, A Promised Land

“The threat of China is not military. The threat of China is they can’t be intimidated. Europe you can intimidate. When the US tries to get people to stop investing in Iran, European companies pull out, China disregards it. You look at history and understand why: China has been around for 4,000 years and just doesn’t give a damn. You can’t intimidate them — it’s driving people in Washington berserk. Yet of all the major powers, China has been the least aggressive militarily.”
― Noam Chomsky

“Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided...but by iron and blood.”
― Otto von Bismarck

“The Hollywood storylines almost always go something like: the Russians are dangerous spies planning to invade us, the Chinese are trying to pull the carpet from under our feet, the people of the Middle East are terrorists, and on and on goes the list of malicious and intentional misrepresentations. At the end of the storyline, the American heroes always win and save America and the world from ‘evil’. What is quite ironic – and often goes unnoticed by many – in these Hollywood storylines is that, while the American culture is engineered to dismiss valid and genuine critique of American life and foreign policies as being ‘conspiracy theories’, America’s relationships with the outside world is strongly based on threats, punishment, sanctioning, wars, and revenge, all done under pretexts like ‘they hate us’, ‘they hate our freedoms and values’, and other such nonsense. It never occurs to many Americans that representing the outside world as constantly ‘hating’ us or wanting to destroy our nation and values (unless, of course, they do as we say), is in fact nothing short of conspiracy theory. Overall, Hollywood’s storylines ensure keeping the myth of exceptionalism alive.”
― Louis Yako

“...why is there so little concern about the real hold that the retrograde monarchy of Saudi Arabia has over the United States? President after President, Trump included, inexplicably continue to partner with the Saudi monarchy despite its suppression of women's rights, and its authoritarian nature, despite the fact that Saudi Arabia does more than any other country to spread Islamist terrorism, including in the form of Al Qaeda, and despite the fact that fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 attackers were Saudi. One might think this deserves some looking into. This is not even to mention the biggest elephant in the room, which is never to be spoken of, and that is Israel and its outsized influence over US foreign policy.”
― Dan Kovalik, The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Russia

“At first glance, one might assume that a peacekeeping soldier from Pakistan, a diplomat from the United States, and a human rights advocate from Senegal would approach their jobs quite differently. Yet, while in Congo for a previous research project, I observed striking similarities in the ways that international interveners understand the situations they face and in the strategies they adopt, despite their otherwise extremely different national, professional, social, and economic backgrounds.”
― Severine Autesserre, Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention

“...international peacebuilders usually arrive in new theaters of deployment with a clear sense of belonging to a specific group – a group markedly different from local populations.”
― Severine Autesserre, Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention

“In our foreign policy as in our own national life we need less fanfare, less stagecraft and circumventing. We need to talk sense, to speak the truth, to work harder and stay faithful to our fundamental beliefs. We are, each of us, responsible for our own actions, but we also know it has been bedrock in our American creed, that without cooperation, without all of us working together, pulling together, we can't make it.”
― David McCullough, The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For

“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
― Winston Churchill

“Countries that are defeated by their enemies often rebuild. But the countries that are destroyed from within—that's really the end of the line.”
― Stephen Kotkin

“Chasing a butterfly with a hammer. - On Uncouth Diplomacy”
― Lamine Pearlheart, Awakening

“Pe scurt, cel mai important defect geopolitic al priorității ”străinătății apropiate” era acela că Rusia nu era suficient de puternică politic pentru a-și impune voința și nici suficient de atrăgătoare economic pentru a putea seduce noile state independente...

O coaliție care să lege Rusia de China și Iran se poate dezvolta numai dacă Statele Unite sunt atât de mioape încât să își facă dușmani China și Iranul în același timp... Mai mult, China ar fi partenerul principal în orice efort serios..., ar fixa inevitabil Rusia într-un statut de partener subordonat... Rusia ar deveni astfel un stat-tampon între o Europă în dezvoltare și o Chină expansionistă…”
― Zbigniew Brzeziński, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives

“În întreaga regiune strategii au început să își pună această întrebare esențială, dar rămasă fără răspuns: ”Pentru câtă vreme pacea în regiunea cea mai populată din lume și pe car să devină cea mai înarmată va fi asigurată de o sută de mii de soldați americani și pentru câtă vreme... e probabil ca ei să mai rămână?” Tocmai în această situație nesigură, creată de naționalisme care se intensifică, de creșteri de populații, de prosperitate din ce în ce mai mare, de speranțe exagerate... în peisajul... Asiei de Est apar schimbări cu adevărat spectaculoase”
― Zbigniew Brzeziński, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives

“But many people don’t realize that the domestic and the foreign policies are actually intertwined. If your government needs to spend billions on waging wars, guess where are they going to get it from? Yes, from your schools, health systems, and other essential public services and institutions.”
― Louis Yako

“The few powerful Western elites…benefit from wars twice: first, by destroying other countries and stealing their resources under different pretexts. Second, by bringing millions of refugees to Western countries and using them as cheap labor. This is where the strong connection between the military-industrial-complex and the refugee-industrial-complex precisely lies.”
― Louis Yako

“Before you hate refugees, remember that ideally, most people wish to live peacefully and with their dignity intact. Remember that many of these refugees would rather come to you as ‘tourists’ with cameras in their hands under much better circumstances rather than as people with no options but to put up with the hate and humiliation awaiting them in the often not so hospitable ‘host’ counties. Before you protest refugees, protest your governments that are either intervening militarily in their countries or arming different groups and factions in their territories to kill each other. The refugee crisis is a deeply political crisis for all actors involved. Before you go in the streets demanding ‘no more refugees,’ rest assured, that these people would never have chosen to come all the way here to take your menial job offers while see you protest their very human existence. Likewise, before you extend your benevolence to these refugees by ‘tolerating’ them, as if doing them a favor, remember, that you actually can really love them because there is so much you can learn from their stories. There is so much work that can be accomplished when you hold hands with these refugees towards mutual human goals.”
― Louis Yako

“In today’s world, a refugee from a war-torn country is a messenger carrying an important message to all Western people. That message is: 'I am here because of what the warmongers in your so-called ‘democratic’ governments have done to my country and my people.' And so, read the message and work with the messenger rather than shoot them.”
― Louis Yako

“After living more than a decade in America now, I have come to accept that most of my fellow American citizens are as powerless as I am in influencing the American foreign policy, especially in the Middle East. Even more discouraging is that, by pointing out this reality, one is immediately labeled as ‘un-American’, ‘anti-American’, or other misleading adjectives and accusations to silence any voices seeking to change this bleak reality.”
― Louis Yako

“A nation without a conscience is a nation without a soul. A nation without a soul is a nation that cannot live.”
― James C. Humes, The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill

“Even though the Congo is the stage of intense international peacebuilding efforts, and even though it recently experienced a transition from war to “peace and democracy,” it continues to be plagued by the deadliest conflict since World War II. Why did the international intervention fail to help the Congo achieve lasting peace and security?”
― Severine Autesserre, The Trouble with the Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of International Peacebuilding

“The president and many of those who served him were sympathetic to the New Left interpretation of foreign affairs, one that considers so-called Western capitalist imperialism as the primary cause of the world’s problems. “We have history,” President Obama said. “We have history in Iran, we have history in Indonesia and Central America. So we have to be mindful of our history when we start talking about intervening, and understand the source of other people’s suspicions.” An underlying premise of the New Left interpretation of history is that an overly powerful America is more often a source of, rather than part of the solution to, the world’s problems.”
― H.R. McMaster, Battlegrounds

“The over-optimism that energized U.S. foreign policy under the George W. Bush administration contributed to an underappreciation of the risks of action, such as the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The pessimism about the efficacy of U.S. engagement abroad that influenced U.S. foreign policy under the Barack Obama administration led to an underappreciation of the risks of inaction, such as the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011 or the decision to forgo military reprisals for the Assad regime’s mass murder of Syrian civilians with chemical weapons in 2013. Both forms of strategic narcissism were based mainly on wishful thinking and the definition of problems as one might like them to be as a way to avoid harsher realities.”
― H.R. McMaster, Battlegrounds

“Consistency and will are, therefore, important dimensions of strategic competence. But our will is diminished. As our foreign policies swung from over-optimism to resignation, identity politics interacted with new forms of populism. That interaction divided us and diminished confidence in our democratic principles, institutions, and processes.”
― H.R. McMaster, Battlegrounds

“[Robert] Pastor explains that the United States did not want to control Nicaragua or other nations in the region, but it also didn't want to allow developments to get out of control. It wanted Nicaraguans to act independently, except when doing so would affect US interests adversely. In short, Nicaragua and other countries should be free: free to do what we want them to do, and should choose their course independently, as long as their choice conforms to our interests. If they use the freedom we accord them unwisely, we are entitled to respond with violence, in self-defence.”
― Noam Chomsky, Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance

“The foreign policy determines and shows actual freedom and independence of the state.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“The American empire is a modern imperialist power structure. That which it cannot seize through irresponsible and immoral corporate bargaining, it will take by force by pitting local indigenous factions against each other, while backing one to overthrow the other. Once successful, the force that was backed will either be copacetic to US interests or be painted as a threat to its national security and exterminated through military invasion.”
― Anonymous

“The constitution is like a rose; foreign policy is its fragrance that flies freely everywhere, and everyone feels equally beyond restrictions. Sure, such context carries beauty, dignity, self-determination, freedom, and success; otherwise, the sting of thorns becomes a painful risk.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“In the United States, the dominant analytic framework for explaining international relations today is realism. ... Those deploying this model to explain Russia’s behavior today...offer several prescriptions for how to defuse the current Russia-Ukraine crisis:

Freeze NATO expansion and Russia will be content.
Offer face-saving concessions that give Russia tangible gains and the threat of war will subside.
Don’t arm Ukraine because that will fuel escalation and trigger a Russian invasion.

If Putin thought like us, maybe some of these proposals might work. But Putin does not think like us. He has his own analytic framework, his own ideas and his own ideology — only some of which comport with Western rational realism.”
― Michael McFaul

“War is not the best way of settling differences—it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“the US would never have said... oh Zelenskyy was bombing his own people... the way they said that about Gaddafi or Assad... the Hypocrisy is staggering.”
― Max Blumenthal