Quotes About Diplomacy

American influence in the world is certainly considerable, but the United States does not control, directly or indirectly, the politics and economics of other societies, as empires have always done, save for a few special cases that turn out to be the exceptions that prove the rule.

Whereas the presence of a powerful state suppresses the capability of fighting, the benefits of trade suppress the intention to fight. Countries that trade with one another avoid war not because they fear losing but because they do not find winning an attractive prospect: they gain more economically by not fighting than by prevailing.

We must continue to pursue peace through diplomacy, but we must also not shrink from our responsibility through the option of strength. We must take advantage of internal resistance and change from within Iran to avert this path of mutual destruction.

Minister Lavrov, he said, well, you know, we don't like it when you have so many NGOs coming to Russia. And I said, well, send Russian NGOs to the United States. [Laughter.] We'll be happy to have them. And I really mean that. I think the more exchange and the more . . . cross-fertilization the better.

I also believed that the Snowden affair marked the end of one of the most confrontational periods in U.S.-Russian history. I thought then that we had hit the bottom and therefore there was nowhere to go but up, though it would take years to climb out of the hole we were in. I was wrong. Things could, and did, get worse.

Biden's national security advisor, Tony Blinken, didn't like that format; he felt it disadvantaged Biden, as Medvedev had primary responsibility in his government for foreign policy and all things American, while Biden was not our point person for Russia. Obama was.

Sometime between the Obama-Medvedev summit in Prague in 2010 and Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2014, public opinion in both countries also flipped: solid majorities in both Russia and the United States now perceived each other as enemies.

Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak hosted me at his residence for a particularly warm, elaborate, and meaningful dinner. He invited all of my friends in the U.S. government, as well as a few of my important informal outside advisors who had participated in developing the ideas of the Reset. Three years earlier, Kislyak and I had started our relationship with our fists up. But over the years, he had grown on me. We were very different people in so many ways, and yet I felt like we clicked. He

History shows that democracies rarely go to war with each other.6 So a democratic Russia would no longer be an enemy of the United States. A

By the end of his second term in 2008, Putin had redefined Russia's role in the world, largely, but not completely, in opposition to the United States and the West.

A Russian television series called Sleepers, in which the United States is plotting to overthrow the Russian government, began airing in the fall of 2017. In the show, the U.S. ambassador is blond; his name is Michael. They haven't forgotten about me yet!)

While assessing the agreement's ultimate success would have to wait several years, the JCPOA ranked at the time as one of the biggest foreign policy achievements of Obama's presidency.

Putin clearly had signaled that engagement with us was not in his portfolio. Yet we understood from that session that he remained the primary decision maker in Russia.

Everyone is interested in war, in that people don't want it to happen. I'm much more interested in peace than in war but it's important to understand why we fight.

Fire and idealism may be fine qualities for the leader of a revolution, but the leader of a great republic needs to be several degrees cooler and a good deal more canny.

Look, Malia, I know your theory. But you can't go round putting people's backs up!' 'I certainly wouldn't wish to do that!' said Dr Malia. 'Well, it annoys people, you know.' 'I'm sorry about that. I try not to get in the way.' 'Well, maybe, but – It's just that you're always creeping around.

You could only to your best, and hope for a strong tail wind to waft you faster to your destination. Until then, you played the game, kept your tongue civil, and spoke favorably of your enemies when either they or their spies might overhear.

five times that amount to Middle Eastern nations, most of which want to destroy Israel. We can't afford this

Let Jordan take the West Bank, let Egypt take Gaza. Let them deal with it. Or sink trying. The Saudis are on the brink, Egyptians are on the brink, all scared to death of Persia . . . Yemen, Sinai, Libya . . . this thing is bad. . . . That's why Russia is so key. . . . Is Russia that bad? They're bad guys. But the world is full of bad guys." Bannon offered all this with something like ebullience—a man remaking the world.

China was the first front in a new cold war. And it had all been misunderstood

China's everything. Nothing else matters. We don't get China right, we don't get anything right. This whole thing is very simple. China is where Nazi Germany was in 1929 to 1930. The Chinese, like the Germans, are the most rational people in the world, until they're not. And they're gonna flip like Germany in the thirties. You're going to have a hypernationalist state, and once that happens you can't put the genie back in the bottle.

the Khashoggi debacle provided yet another example of the bizarre and inexplicable relationships that Trump and his family had formed with bad guys around the world,

Trade it out so in the end everyone got something, and the better dealmaker got a little more.

Kushner was the driver of the Trump doctrine. His test cases were China, Mexico, Canada, and Saudi Arabia. He offered each country the opportunity to make his father-in-law happy.