Quotes About Diplomacy

We need peacemakers, not peacekeepers.

On March 7, 1936, Hitler's army marched unopposed into the Rhineland, a demilitarized buffer zone between France and Germany. U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull did not protest, and FDR went fishing.

It was the French fear that, given that option, the U.S. would "chicken out," and sacrifice Europe to save its own skin, that led the French to develop their own independent nuclear capacity.

Overnight, the long-standing tenet that defense should be an extension of foreign policy was reversed.

China, in the future, is going to have even more nuclear capability than it has had in the past. I don't believe that they have anything to fear from the United States, and I frankly don't believe they do fear the United States.

I'll keep peace at all cost, even if I choke to death on my tongue.

Oh, I think we want to try some unusual methods in dealing with the Indian people. Honesty. Honoring our treaties with them. We will not use the military. Not on my agency.

The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right time, but also to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

But one immediate thing can be done right now, and that is: lower the temperature. Any way you can, and everybody. Just lower it.

You can say the same thing nicely.

War is the statesman's game

As I learn about pest control, it reminds me of international relations - fraught with unintended consequences and shifting alliances and deals, a place where the enemy of my enemy is my friend and has always been my friend and will always be my friend, until the next shift in the balance of power when it's suddenly the other way around. The whole thing is a delicate dance (...)

You know, I think that President Obama is a person who has a great relationship with a number of people. Colin Powell does, too. I think Colin Powell is a fine American, a great leader and sees things in President Obama that he agrees with. He's entitled to have his opinion.

A stable and prosperous Germany, he believed, was the best guarantor of a lasting peace.

As he had demonstrated with the Soviets, Baker recognized that the person across the table had his or her own domestic politics to worry about and he made a point of looking for ways to satisfy those needs while still getting what he wanted.

North and South Vietnam were meant to be reunified in national elections two years later, but Saigon—with Washington's support—reneged.

The Army and Navy Journal labeled the latest raids simply "one more chapter in the old volume," the result of alternately feeding and fighting the tribes. "We go to them Janus-faced. One of our hands holds the rifle and the other the peace-pipe, and we blaze away with both instruments at the same time. The chief consequence is a great smoke—and there it ends.

his reaction was a sign of civilization. Nobody reaches for a gun anymore, just for his lawyer.

When Kevin Rudd announced that Australia would bid for a non-permanent seat on the Security Council Tony Abbott announced his immediate opposition. The bid would be abandoned in the event of a Coalition victory at the 2010 election, he pledged. The total cost was then estimated at perhaps $40 million, though ended up at around $25 million.16 For perspective, the Victorian Government spent $56.7 million to subsidise the Grand Prix in 2012 alone.17

Or, as Philip Ruddock, Howard's immigration minister, put it to the author: 'Indonesia will work with you if you don't decide to embarrass them over it.' Yet this is exactly what the Abbott opposition had done. It violated the Howard precedent and the Ruddock rule by broadcasting the tow-back plan loud and long.

Only one nation, the United States, exercised the usual diplomatic form of expressing revulsion at the Nazi rampage by calling America's ambassador home "for consultations.

Foreign policy often involved nothing more than the decision whom to make war upon.

The EU is the continuation of Germany by other means

Then Israel sent messengers to Sihon king of the Amorites, saying,