Quotes About Diplomacy

Cooperate with the Obama administration at your own peril. And if you have to shake his hand, make sure you don't look happy about it.

Maybe nothing would come of my Cairo speech. Maybe the dysfunction of the Middle East would play itself out regardless of what I did. Maybe the best we could hope for was to placate men like Mubarak and kill those who would try to kill us. Maybe, as the Pyramids had whispered, none of it mattered in the long run. But on the only scale that any of us can truly comprehend, the span of centuries, the actions of an American president sixty-five years earlier had set the world on a better course.

President Bush would end up doing all he could to make the eleven weeks between my election and his departure go smoothly.

I hope you don't mind me asking, Your Majesty," I said, "but how do you keep up with twelve wives?" "Very badly," he said, shaking his head wearily. "One of them is always jealous of the others. It's more complicated than Middle East politics.

rituals of diplomacy, but also rituals of tribute to an empire.

I would often surprise people by citing George H. W. Bush as a recent president whose foreign policy I admired. Bush, along with James Baker, Colin Powell, and Brent Scowcroft, had deftly managed the end of the Cold War and the successful prosecution of the Gulf War.

CONTRARY TO THE BELIEFS of many in the Arab world (and more than a few American reporters), the United States is not a grand puppet master whimsically pulling the strings of the countries with which it does business.

After 9/11, counterterrorism took center stage. In pursuing each of these goals, we'd made autocrats our allies. They were predictable, after all, and committed to keeping a lid on things. They hosted our military bases and cooperated with us on counterterrorism efforts. And, of course, they did lots of business with U.S. companies.

That evening, after she'd run me through an exhaustive list of U.S. foreign policy errors that she insisted needed correcting, I suggested she might want to get out of the ivory tower and work with me for a spell.

Many of the veteran diplomats and experts they talked to were predictably skeptical of the need for any change to U.S. policy, arguing that as unsavory as some of our Arab allies might be, the status quo served America's core interests—something that wasn't guaranteed if more populist governments took their place.

But I had my legs beneath me now and was convinced I was right, particularly on the more general principle that America shouldn't be afraid to engage its adversaries or push for diplomatic solutions to conflict.

It went without saying that trying to convince an aging, embattled despot to ride off into the sunset, even if it was in his own interests, would be a delicate operation

But in the eyes of the public, at least, foreign policy in the nineties lacked any overarching theme or grand imperatives.

You ready for me, Wen?" I called out, watching the Chinese leader's face drop in surprise. I then walked around the table to shake each of their hands. "Gentlemen! I've been looking everywhere for you. How about we see if we can do a deal?" Before anybody could object, I grabbed an empty chair and sat down. Across the table, Wen and Singh remained impassive, while Lula and Zuma looked sheepishly down at the papers in front of them.

It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There's a lot of -- I don't know what the term is in Austrian, wheeling and dealing.

The speeches, the small talk, the easy familiarity—it all felt too comfortable, almost ritualized, a performance that each of the four leaders had probably participated in dozens of times before, designed to placate the latest U.S. president who thought things could change.

You know things have hit a low point when our closest allies think we're worse on an issue than North Korea," Ben said, shaking his head.

As to the career of avoiding making enemies. You can't dig any burrow deep enough. Might as well stand and look them in the eye.

You must understand the language of your enemy.

Tatsu had pursued me for years, but more recently we had managed to achieve an improbable entente.

Well, Colonel, there is diplomacy and there is reality. Our ambassador represents diplomacy. I represent reality. And the reality is we don't want you.

previous secretary of war, Henry Stimson, memorably put it, "gentlemen do not read each other's mail." One of the few American officials who had promoted intelligence

Most American-sponsored "regime change" operations have, in the end, weakened rather than strengthened American security.

modern Afghan history shows that "an ounce of nation-building prevention will be worth a pound of military-operation cure.