Quotes About Diplomacy

Empires in decay, blinded by their hubris and unable to accept their diminishing power, refuse to confront hard and unpleasant facts. They replace diplomacy, multilateralism, and politics with unilateral threats and the blunt instrument of war.

World War II was decided by steel and aluminum, and followed shortly thereafter by the Cold War, which was defined by atomic weapons. The rivalry between the United States and China may well be determined by computing power.

President Putin has been a stealthy reformer yearning for consensus.

that future is dependent on a small island that Beijing considers a renegade province and America has committed to defend by force.

One of us needs to know how to talk. I'm good with a gun, I think you should take up talking.

Introduced by de Gaulle to protect France's 'vital interests', when there was a possibility that Britain would use it, the French wanted it abolished.

Nonintervention does not mean that nothing happens. It means that something else happens.

If the counsel of the peaceniks had been followed, Kuwait would today be the nineteenth province of Iraq. Bosnia would be a trampled and cleansed province of Greater Serbia, Kosovo would have been emptied of most of its inhabitants, and the Taliban would still be in power in Afghanistan. Yet nothing seems to disturb the contented air of moral superiority of those that intone the peace movement.

British diplomats and Anglo-American types in Washington have a near-superstitious prohibition on uttering the words 'Special Relationship' to describe relations between Britain and America, lest the specialness itself vanish like a phantom at cock-crow.

Generally it must be stated that realpolitik has been better at dividing than at ruling. Take it as a whole since Kissinger called on the Shah in 1972, and see what the harvest has been.

If the Bahreini royal family can have an embassy, a state, and a seat at the UN, why should the twenty-five million Kurds not have a claim to autonomy? The alleviation of their suffering and the assertion of their self-government is one of the few unarguable benefits of regime change in Iraq. It is not a position from which any moral retreat would be allowable.

I respect those who say that the United States should simply withdraw from the Middle East, but I don't respect them for anything but their honesty.

It is a settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute. The United States, while they wish for war with no nation, will buy peace with none.

Internationalism is the highest form of patriotism.

Among the privileges of being a superpower, the right and the ability to make a local quarrel into a global one ranks very high.

In the first half of the century, British intelligence was principally a machine for involving the United States in war on the British side.

It is beyond doubt that wherever the United States needed to lose any kind of virginity in global affairs, the British were on hand with unguents and aphrodisiacs of all kinds.

Agent Shelan wondered if it would really hurt diplomatic relations with the Klingon Empire all that much if she tossed Korath, Son of Monak, into an antimatter reactor. Surely if anyone would recognize homicide as a valid response to intolerable annoyance, it would be the Klingons.

There is a proper way to greet the sentinels in Ceris, certain patterns and forms that you must observe when presented to Queen Islanzadí, and a hundred different manners in which to greet those around you, if it's not better to just remain quiet." "With all your customs," Eragon risked saying, "it seems as though you've only made it easier to offend people." A smile flickered across her lips. "Perhaps.

Stalin's own crimes and blunders are not justified, of course, nor can the past fifty years of Soviet publicity concerning Nazi crimes always be taken at face value. But whether the U.S. government intended it or not, its actions cast the die for the cold war not in 1946 or 1947 (as most Western observers would have it), but by the end of 1945 and arguably earlier.

The fact is that no clear international ban against crimes against humanity existed prior to 1945, due in large part to U.S. opposition.

It always seems easier to do nothing, when the harm is don elsewhere," Dakon said. "They know their young ones will either learn a lesson and limp home – or die and stop being a problem – or prove successful. The worst that could happen is a bit of a diplomatic hiccup in history.

Întreaga art? a r?zboiului este bazat? pe înÈ™el?torie.

can understand how a kindly, patriotic man like Hayes would be charmed by the prospect. I was as anxious for such a policy as Mr. Hayes. There has never been a moment since Lee surrendered that I would not have gone more than halfway to meet the Southern people in a spirit of conciliation. But they have never responded to it. They have not forgotten the war.