Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
No one pursuing reasonable goals and who is prepared to compromise can argue that terrorism is his or his group's only option.
The United States emerged from the Cold War with unprecedented absolute and relative power. It was truly first among unequals.
No amount of sanctioning will persuade North Korea to give up nuclear weapons, nor will China step up and solve the problem for us.
It is difficult to think of a foreign policy issue that preoccupies and polarizes world opinion as much as the Palestinian question.
Unrestrained zeal to make the world better could make it worse. Promoting democracy must be undertaken with humility, care, and wisdom.
It is true that the U.S. could and should have been more generous as Russia made its painful transition to a market economy in the 1990s.
The abolition of the presidential term limit and President Xi Jinping's concentration of power have come as an unwelcome surprise to many.
Americans never would alter the way entitlement programs are funded or education administered without serious study and widespread debate.
Nationalism is a tool increasingly used by leaders to bolster their authority, especially amid difficult economic and political conditions.
The benefits of freer trade, such as job creation, lower inflation, and greater consumer choice, are often invisible or only partly visible.
What is obvious is that Donald Trump is comfortable with an approach to running his presidency based on what worked for him in the private sector.
American presidents get to make lots of choices, with one critical exception: what awaits them in the in-box on top of the desk in the Oval Office.
Security is the absolute precondition for sustainable recovery from conflict; without it, people cannot rebuild their country or return to school or work.
Our inability to govern ourselves at home, to deal with everything from infrastructure to our debt to tax policy, is reducing the appeal of the American model.
The rise of populism is in part a response to stagnating incomes and job loss, owing mostly to new technologies but widely attributed to imports and immigrants.
For President Bush, the first, the 41st president, George Herbert Walker Bush, I spent all 4 years of his presidency on the staff for the National Security Council.
The horror and tragedy that was 9/11 did many things; one of them was to galvanize this country and much of the world against terrorists and those who support them.
Generically, wars in necessity are wars where, I think, the vital interest of the nation are at stake, in which there are no viable alternatives to the use of force.
Donald Trump's United States is not isolationist. He has authorized the use of limited military force against the Syrian government in a manner his predecessor rejected.
If anything, what happened in Iraq after the fall of Saddam set back prospects for democratic reform in the region, as many came to associate political change with chaos.
Europeans must shed their illusions about what they can accomplish in the world on their own. Loose talk about resurrecting a multi-polar world is just that - loose talk.
Campaigning and governing are two very different activities, and there is no reason to assume that how Trump conducted the former will dictate how he approaches the latter.
If old American alliance commitments don't count for as much, countries will, in some cases, then say, 'Well, we've got to militarize in certain ways and act more independently.'
If Trump, for whatever reason, continues to coddle Russia, then Congress, the media, foundations, and academics should publicly detail the corruption that characterizes Putin's rule.
On occasion, terrorists will succeed despite our best efforts. That is part of the legacy of 9/11. But 9/11 also shows us that while terrorists can destroy, they are unable to create.
The Internet, one of the great inventions of the modern Western world, has shown itself to be a weapon that can be used to incite and train those who wish to cause harm to that world.
There is a clear norm against the spread of nuclear weapons, but there is no consensus or treaty on what, if anything, is to be done once a country develops or acquires nuclear weapons.
Russian membership in the World Trade Organization has the potential to strengthen the rule of law, combat corruption, and give Russia a stake in better relations with the outside world.
Russia may well be willing to stop interfering in Eastern Ukraine in exchange for a degree of sanctions relief if it could be assured that ethnic Russians there would not face reprisals.
The political world is defined by relationships rather than transactions, and by numerous actors at home and abroad with independent power. Navigating such a world is difficult and precarious.
There is no getting around the reality that the second Iraq war was a war of choice; had it been carried out differently, it still would have been an expensive choice and almost certainly a bad one.
Indeed, the big U.S. error after 9/11 was to treat Pakistan as if it were an ally. With an ally, it is possible to assume a large degree of policy overlap. With Pakistan, no such assumption can be made.
Terrorists and terrorism cannot be eliminated any more than we can rid the world of disease. There will always be those who will resort to force against innocent men, women, and children in pursuit of political goals.
What countries must do to join the World Trade Organization is precisely what they must do to become productive and democratic: accept the rule of law, reduce corruption, and become open, accountable, and transparent.
The United States is not just another country. It has more capacity and potential to influence the world than any other country - and no other country has the resources and mindset to lead a world that is not on autopilot.
For too long, America tolerated a 'democratic exception' in the Muslim Middle East. As long as governments were friendly and backed regional stability, there was no need for outsiders to encourage representative government.
Well, we ought to make clear to everybody that the next Korean War, if one were ever to happen, is going to be the last Korean War because it's going to end with a unified peninsula, and it's go to be under Seoul, not Pyongyang.
Americans were happy to buy vast quantities of relatively inexpensive Chinese manufactured goods, demand for which provided jobs for the tens of millions of Chinese who moved from poor agricultural areas to new or rapidly expanding cities.
I am confident in saying that Oberlin did more for me than vice versa. I took a fantastic class in religion, which led me to archaeology, which got me to the Middle East, which led me to international relations, which launched me on my career.
The United States, working closely with the United Kingdom and others, established the liberal world order in the wake of World War II. The goal was to ensure that the conditions that had led to two world wars in 30 years would never again arise.
I tend to be one of those who does not equate democratization with the holding of elections. The emphasis ought to be on such things as rule of law, economic reform, and promotion of a free media - in short, essentially independent, free institutions.
The U.S. does not want to live under the shadow of a North Korea that possesses long-range missiles capable of delivering nuclear payloads to American cities. At the same time, the U.S. has no appetite for a war that would prove costly by every measure.
We ought to be doing much more in North America. We are on the cusp of an energy revolution. And we do need to be doing more at home. The biggest national security threats facing the United States right now are not in the Middle East. They are domestic.
There's a pattern in Bush 43's presidency of being attracted to the big and the bold, and my whole reading of him is that he was instinctively uncomfortable with what you might call a modulated foreign policy - a foreign policy of adjustment, of degree.
I did not support the U.S. decision to intervene with military force in Libya. The evidence was not persuasive that a large-scale massacre or genocide was either likely or imminent. Policies other than military intervention were never given a full chance.
It is in the interest of Americans to find out what those wanting to be president think about a wide range of challenges and what they might do about them. We should want to get their take on the wisdom of past decisions, what they agree and disagree with, and why.
Hillary Clinton is pretty much what we would call a foreign-policy realist, someone who thinks the purpose of American foreign policy should be to adjust the foreign policies of other countries, work closely with traditional allies in Europe and Asia towards that end.
Trade accords had been a staple of the post-World War II world, providing a mechanism for economic growth, development, and association with friends and allies, and a means of reining in would-be adversaries who otherwise would have little incentive to act with restraint.
The first Iraq War was one of necessity because vital U.S. interests were at stake, and we reached the point where no other national-security instruments were likely to achieve the necessary goal, which was the reversal of Saddam Hussein's invasion and occupation of Kuwait.
September 11, 2001, was a terrible tragedy by any measure, but it was not a historical turning point. It did not herald a new era of international relations in which terrorists with a global agenda prevailed or in which such spectacular terrorist attacks became commonplace.