Quotes About Diplomacy

At a meeting of the National Security Council on March 4, 1953, Eisenhower wondered aloud why it wasn't possible "to get some of the people in these downtrodden countries to like us instead of hating us.

In the mid-1950s Winston Churchill advised his American friends to recognize that Ho Chi Minh was unbeatable, accept his victory, and try to make the best of it. This the Dulles brothers could not do—because they were Americans.

He projected American power through regional allies like Iran, Zaire, and Indonesia, and turned a blind eye as dictators in those countries oppressed and looted with abandon.

All that this country desires is that the other republics on this continent shall be happy and prosperous," Theodore Roosevelt declared, "and they cannot be happy and prosperous unless they maintain order within their boundaries and behave with a just regard for their obligations toward outsiders.

McKinley was known above all for his inscrutability. He gave almost all the people he met the impression that he agreed with them, and rarely allowed even his closest advisers to know what he was thinking.

IN 1910, AFTER THEODORE ROOSEVELT met Kaiser Wilhelm II, the former American president (1901–9) confided in his wife, "I'm absolutely certain now, we're all in for it.

War, 46. 267. Bunyan, Intervention, 277

Had Wilhelm II backed off and curbed his dependent Austro-Hungarian ally, Nicholas II would have backed down as well.

Churchill said, Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.

Lincoln was right. Do I not destroy my enemy when I make them my friend?

That's the problem with bureaucrats. They think everything is negotiable." The

The first George Bush. And

Pero por supuesto, eso depende de quién lo haga. Si lo hiciera Al Gore, podría conseguir un segundo premio Nobel de la Paz; si fuera Hugo Chávez, probablemente recibiría pronto una visita de los aviones de combate estadounidenses.

if you are hoping to damage opponents' mental health, go ahead and tell them how inferior or dim-witted or nasty they are. But even if you are certifiably right on every point, you should not think for a minute that you will ever be able to persuade them. Name-calling will make you an enemy, not an ally, and if that is your objective, then persuasion is probably not what you were after in the first place.

In fact, war may be just another obstacle an enlightened species learns to overcome, like pestilence, hunger, and poverty.

Golden Arches theory: no two countries with a McDonald's have ever fought in a war.

Parker Brothers tried to introduce a German version of Risk, the board game in which players try to dominate a map of the world, the German government tried to censor it. (Eventually the rules were rewritten so that players were "liberating" rather than conquering their opponents' territories.)

In 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2009, there were no interstate conflicts at all.

downslopes in the curve show that at various times Algeria, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Romania, South Korea, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, and Yugoslavia have pursued nuclear weapons but then thought the better of it—occasionally through the persuasion of an Israeli air strike, but more often by choice.

Why spend money and blood to invade a country and plunder its treasure when you can just buy it from them at less expense and sell them some of your own?

In fact, as of May 15, 1984, the major powers of the world had remained at peace with one another for the longest stretch of time since the Roman Empire.

As Winston Churchill noted, "Always remember, however sure you are that you can easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a chance.

As religious issues came to dominate political ones, any negotiations with the enemies of one state looked more and more like heresy and treason. The questions which divided Catholics from Protestants had ceased to be negotiable. Consequently . . . diplomatic contacts diminished."98 It would not be the last time ideological fervor would act as an accelerant to a military conflagration.

Instead of asking, "Why is there war?" we might ask, "Why is there peace?" We can obsess not just over what we have been doing wrong but also over what we have been doing right. Because we have been doing something right, and it would be good to know what, exactly, it is.