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China Is A Country With A Record Of Continuous Self-government Going Back 4,000 Years, The Only Society That Has Achieved This. One Must Start With The Assumption That They Must Have Learnt Something About The Requirements For Survival, And It Is Not Always To Be Assumed That We Know It Better Than They Do.

-Henry A. Kissinger

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China Is A Country

Henry A. Kissinger

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China Is A Country With A Record Of Continuous Self-government Going Back 4,000 Years, The Only Society That Has Achieved This. One Must Start With The Assumption That They Must Have Learnt Something About The Requirements For Survival, And It Is Not Always To Be Assumed That We Know It Better Than They Do.

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More From Henry A. Kissinger

A Little Uncertainty Is Good For Everyone.

A Leader Who Confines His Role To His People's Experience Dooms Himself To Stagnation; A Leader Who Outstrips His People's Experience Runs The Risk Of Not Being Understood.

Control Oil And You Control Nations; Control Food And You Control The People.

Like Any Developing Country, It Has An Inequality Of Wealth. In The Chinese Case, It Is Particularly [pronounced] By The Fact That They Decided They Couldn't Make The Whole Country Move Forward Simultaneously, So They've Started Region By Region. So The Interior Regions Are Much Less Well Off Than The Coastal Regions. And This Is Certainly A Huge Challenge, Because It Produces A Flow Of Populations From The Poorer Regions To The Richer Regions.

The Conventional Army Loses If It Does Not Win. The Guerrilla Wins If He Does Not Lose.

Our Greatest Foreign Policy Problem Is Our Divisions At Home. Our Greatest Foreign Policy Need Is National Cohesion And A Return To The Awareness That In Foreign Policy We Are All Engaged In A Common National Endeavor.

People Are Now Starting To Explain The Cold War. Even In The Crises At That Time The Survival Of Millions Of People Was At Stake. And We (the Usa) Had To Threaten The Other Super Power With Retaliation To Prevent It From Doing Something To Us. Today We Live In A World In Which A Lot Of Things Are In Flux. That Creates A Lot Of Fear. But It Is Also A Time Of Great Opportunity. And I Would Call On Today's Statesmen To Not Allow Their Thinking To Be Directed By Fear.

Diplomats Operate Through Deadlock, Which Is The Way By Which Two Sides Can Test Each Other's Determination. Even If They Have Egos For It Few Heads Of Government Have The Time To Resolve Stalemates, Their Meetings Are Too Short And The Demands Of Protocol Too Heavy.

China Had Never Had To Deal In A World Of Countries Of Approximately Equal Strength, And So To Adjust To Such A World, Is In Itself A Profound Challenge To China, Which Now Has Fourteen Countries On Its Borders, Some Of Which Are Small, But Can Project Their Nationality Into China, Some Of Which Are Large, And Historically Significant, So That Any Attempt By Chinese To Dominate The World, Would Involve In A Disastrous For The Peace Of The World.

I Have Always Expressed Respect For Those People Who Make Public Declarations.

What We In America Call Terrorists Are Really Groups Of People That Reject The International System

Certainly Not A Party Of The Workers And The Peasants. In Fact, Jiang Zemin In Recent Weeks Has Officially Said That Capitalists And The Entrepreneurs Should Be Enrolled In The Communist Party.

The Absence Of Alternatives Clears The Mind Marvelously.

Of Course, In Principle, They're Against It. We Are The Ones That Keep Asking Them What They Think About It. I Think Their Basic Concern Is A Land-based Missile Defense Of Taiwan Hooked Into The American Communications And Other Systems, Which In Effect Would Make Taiwan Then An Outpost Of The United States. That Is A Concern They Frequently Express. A Missile Defense Shield Of The United States, While They May Not Like It, It Is Not A Big Obstacle To Our Relationship.

It Is, After All, The Responsibility Of The Expert To Operate The Familiar And That Of The Leader To Transcend It.

Today, America Would Be Outraged If U.n. Troops Entered Los Angeles To Restore Order. Tomorrow They Will Be Grateful! This Is Especially True If They Were Told That There Were An Outside Threat From Beyond, Whether Real Or Promulgated, That Threatened Our Very Existence. It Is Then That All Peoples Of The World Will Plead To Deliver Them From This Evil. The One Thing Every Man Fears Is The Unknown. When Presented With This Scenario, Individual Rights Will Be Willingly Relinquished For The Guarantee Of Their Well-being Granted To Them By The World Government

Statesmen Think In Terms Of History And View Society As An Organism. Prophets Are Different Since They Believe Absolute Aims Can Be Achieved In The Foreseeable Future. More People Have Been Killed By Crusaders Than By Statesmen.

Many Of The Scientists Have Believed That Their Contribution To Ending The Nuclear Race Is Not To Let Any New Weapons To Be Developed.

For Other Nations, Utopia Is A Blessed Past Never To Be Recovered; For Americans It Is Just Beyond The Horizon.

The Reason Prophets Are So Rarely Honored In Their Own Country Is That Their Role Is To Transcend The Limits Of Their Contemporaries' Experience And Imagination. They Achieve Recognition Only When Their Vision Has Been Turned Into Experience - In Short, When It Is Too Late To Benefit From Their Foresight.

Diplomacy: The Art Of Restraining Power.

We First Became Conscious Of The Plane Publicly On A Monday. I Thought Then By The Weekend It Would Be Done. But Then The Chinese Military, The Defense Minister Made A Statement Saying That If There Was No Apology From The United States, The Chinese Military And The Chinese People Would Never Understand. No Reference To The Government Or The Communist Party, And That Obviously Presented An Internal Problem To The Chinese Leadership, Which Was Travelling At That Moment.

Baseball Is The Most Intellectual Game Because Most Of The Action Goes On In Your Head.

Nothing Is More Urgent Than A Serious, Dare I Say Compassionate, Debate As To Where We Are Going At Home And Abroad. Technicians Cannot Master Revolutions; Every Great Achievement Was An Idea Before It Became A Reality. Cathedrals Cannot Be Built By Those Who Are Paralyzed By Doubt Or Consumed By Cynicism. If A Society Loses The Capacity For Great Conception, It Can Be Administered But Not Governed.

In The Middle '50s, I Had Written That The Point Would Come, Inevitably, At Which The Relationship Between The Cause Of Conflict And Political Objectives Would Be Lost.

The Illegal We Do Immediately. The Unconstitutional Takes A Little Longer.

The Russian People, At Least The Ones I Know, Have Pride In Being A Russian. And, Therefore, They Want To Be Taken Seriously In International Affairs.

Every Civilization That Has Ever Existed Has Ultimately Collapsed.

If Tehran Insists On Combining The Persian Imperial Tradition With Contemporary Islamic Fervor, Then A Collision With America And, Indeed, With Its Negotiating Partners Of The Six Is Unavoidable. Iran Simply Cannot Be Permitted To Fulfill A Dream Of Imperial Rule In A Region Of Such Importance To The Rest Of The World.

We Attempted To Try To Solve Every Problem In The World, Out Of A Sense Of Moral Obligations, And Attitudes, And Our History. But No Country Can Solve Every Problem Without Exhausting Itself. Therefore, We Have To Establish Priorities.

American Politics Are Normally A Result Of Pragmatic And Not Philosophical Reasoning. No One In Washington Has Said We Now Prefer Multilateralism.

Iraq Has To Be Made An International, And Not Just A National American Problem.

Superstars Strive For Approbation; Heroes Walk Alone. Superstars Crave Consensus; Heroes Define Themselves By The Judgment Of A Future They See It As Their Task To Bring About. Superstars Seek Success In A Technique For Eliciting Support; Heroes Pursue Success As The Outgrowth Of Inner Values.

What Political Leaders Decide, Intelligence Services Tend To Seek To Justify.

Intelligence Services

The Problem Is Russia Is A Country That Has Lost 300 Years Of Its History, In Terms Of Most Of What Was Part Of The Russian Empire In Europe, Towards Europe, Since Peter The Great, Has Been The Territory That Is No Longer Under Russian Rule.

Nafta Is A Major Stepping Stone To The New World Order.

I Don't Think That That's A Desirable Option For Us. Besides, It Wouldn't Work, Because There Are Too Many Other Countries That Are Willing To Work Economically With China. But I Don't Think The Basic Relationship Depends On Economics. It Depends On A Political Understanding Of What Is Required For Peace In Asia.

It Is Frankly A Mistake Of Amateurs To Believe You Can Gain The Upper Hand In A Diplomatic Negotiation.

The Task Of The Leader Is To Get His People From Where They Are To Where They Have Not Been.

If It's Going To Come Out Eventually, Better Have It Come Out Immediately.

I Believe It Is A Mistake To Isolate Arms Control From Other Areas Of Policy.

The American Temptation Is To Believe That Foreign Policy Is A Subdivision Of Psychiatry.

Administration Has Managed The Extraordinary Feat Of Having, At One And The Same Time, The Worst Relations With Our Allies, The Worst Relations With Our Adversaries, And The Most Serious Upheavals In The Developing World Since The End Of The Second World War.

A Nation Riven By Factions, In Which The Minority Has No Hope Of Ever Becoming A Majority, Or In Which Some Group Knows It Is Perpetually Outcast, Will Seem Oppressive To Its Members, Whatever The Legal Pretensions.

Realism In Foreign Policy Is Made Up Of A Clear Set Of Values, Since Difficult Foreign Policy Decisions Are Often Decided With The Narrowest Of Majorities. Without Any Sense Of What Is Right And Wrong, One Would Drown In A Flood Of Difficult And Pragmatic Decisions.

Oil Is Much Too Important A Commodity To Be Left In The Hands Of The Arabs.

In The Hands Of A Determined Secretary, The Foreign Service Can Be A Splendid Instrument, Staffed By Knowledgeable, Discreet, And Energetic Individuals. They Do Require Constant Vigilance Lest The Convictions That Led Them Into A Penurious Career Tempt Them To Preempt Decision-making.

Peace Depends Ultimately Not On Political Arrangements But On The Conscience Of Mankind.

We Have To Be Careful In Negotiating With Iran That We Don't Create The Impression Among The Arab States And The Sunni States That We Are Working On A Condominium Between Iran And The United States, Because That Will Panic Them And Drive Them Into Making Their Own Arrangement.

I Believe That Without Watergate We Would Have Had An Extraordinary Period Of Success With A Strong Nixon And A Still Vital Brezhnev In Power.

The Chinese Military Budget Today Is Officially Listed As, I Think, About $15 Billion. But Even If You Double It, That's Only A Tenth Of Ours. So The Possibility Of China Challenging The United States For The Next Ten Years Over The Pacific Is Next To Zero. There Could Be A Conflict Between Us And China Over Taiwan, But I Think That, Too, Will Not Occur With The Proper Policies On Both Sides.

The Elderly Are Useless Eaters.

We Fought A Military War; Our Opponents Fought A Political One. We Sought Physical Attrition; Our Opponents Aimed For Our Psychological Exhaustion. In The Process We Lost Sight Of One Of The Cardinal Maxims Of Guerrilla War: The Guerrilla Wins If He Does Not Lose. The Conventional Army Loses If It Does Not Win. The North Vietnamese Used Their Armed Forces The Way A Bull-fighter Uses His Cape To Keep Us Lunging In Areas Of Marginal Political Importance.

We Are Not Just Any Nation.

No, [the U.s.] Has Made It Clear That We Consider A Peaceful Resolution An Essential Aspect Of American Foreign Policy. This I Believe To Be A Situation Understood By China, But Again, It Is Important To Not Sound Too Truculent. Taking On A Billion-plus Chinese Is Not An Enterprise Which One Should Enter Lightly.

One Thing I Don't Want Around Me Is A Military Intellectual. I Don't Have To Worry About You On That Score.

The True Conservative Is Not At Home In Social Struggle. He Will Attempt To Avoid Unbridgeable Schism, Because He Knows That A Stable Social Structure Thrives Not On Triumphs But On Reconciliations.

The American Foreign Policy Trauma Of The Sixties And Seventies Was Caused By Applying Valid Principles To Unsuitable Conditions.

I Don't Read Books, I Write Them.

The Security Of Israel Is A Moral Imperative For All Free Peoples.

High Office Teaches Decision Making, Not Substance. It Consumes Intellectual Capital; It Does Not Create It. Most High Officials Leave Office With The Perceptions And Insights With Which They Entered; They Learn How To Make Decisions But Not What Decisions To Make.

Revolutionaries Are Rarely Motivated Primarily By Material Considerations-though The Illusion That They Are Persists In The West.

It Is Not Often That Nations Learn From The Past Even Rarer That They Draw The Correct Conclusions From It. For The Lessons Of Historical Experience, As Of Personal Experience, Are Contingent. They Teach The Consequences Of Certain Actions, But They Cannot Force A Recognition Of Comparable Situations.

No One Will Ever Win The Battle Of The Sexes; There's Too Much Fraternizing With The Enemy.

While We Should Never Give Up Our Principles, We Must Also Realize That We Cannot Maintain Our Principles Unless We Survive.

It Is An Act Of Insanity And National Humiliation To Have A Law Prohibiting The President From Ordering Assassination.

I Was Always Convinced That Decent People In The Case Of Vietnam, Highly Intelligent, Decent People, Got Us Involved Because They Had Made, In Part, A Misjudgment About The Nature Of The Communist System And The Unity Of The Communist World And The Degree To Which The Experience Of Europe Could Be Repeated In Vietnam.

In The Period After The Second World War, There Were Still Leaders In Europe Who Represented Weak Countries, But Possessed A Sense Of Global Foreign Policy. Nowadays, On The Other Hand, There Are Politicians Who Represent Pretty Powerful Countries, But Whose Citizens Are Not Prepared To Sacrifice Themselves For The State.

Power Is The Ultimate Aphrodisiac.

The First Reactions Are Often Instinctive. So One Of The First Things We Said Was That The Chinese Had No Right To Inspect The Plane, And That We Had A Sovereign Right To. I Don't Know What The Legal Position Is, But It Was Surely Psychologically Absolutely The Unwise Thing To Do.

Taiwan Will Probably Not Declare Independence. The Question Isn't Independence. The Issue Is Whether Taiwan Will Declare Itself As A Sovereign Separate State. That Will Start A Huge Crisis If That Happens.

The Essence Of Richard Nixon Is Loneliness.

Transcendentalism

Every Time There Has Been An Attempt To Disturb It, It Led To Two Things. It Led To Immediate Intense Conflict With China, And It Led To A Reaffirmation In The End, Because Nobody Wanted A Major Confrontation With China To This Principle Of A "one China" Policy Within Which Taiwan Is Finding A Place Now. Its Own Position Has Greatly Improved Since The Nixon Policy. It Is Richer, It Is Stronger And It Is Participating In Many International Organizations.

I Don't Stand On Protocol. Just Call Me Your Excellency.

The Art Of Good Foreign Policy Is To Understand And To Take Into Consideration The Values Of A Society, To Realize Them At The Outer Limit Of The Possible.

A Diamond Is A Chunk Of Coal That Is Made Good Under Pressure.

If You Control The Oil You Control The Country; If You Control Food, You Control The Population.

A Country That Demands Moral Perfection In Its Foreign Policy Will Achieve Neither Perfection Nor Security.

Where Position Is Felt To Be A Birthright, Generosity Is Possible (though Not Guaranteed); Flexibility Is Not Inhibited By A Commitment To Perpetual Success.

The One Thing Man Fears Is The Unknown. When Presented With This Scenario, Individual Rights Will Be Willingly Relinquished For The Guarantee Of Their Well-being Granted To Them By A World Government, A New World Order.

[the New World Order] Cannot Happen Without U.s. Participation, As We Are The Most Significant Single Component. Yes, There Will Be A New World Order, And It Will Force The United States To Change It's Perceptions.

World Government

Behind The Slogans Lay An Intellectual Vacuum.

I Believe That There Is A Whole Set Of Issues In The World - Environment, Proliferation, Energy, Cyberspace - That Can Only Be Dealt With On A Global Basis. The Traditional Patterns Of National Rivalry And National Competition Are Not Suitable For Those Cases.

I Have Learned, As I Wrote, That History Must Be Discovered, Not Declared. It's An Admission That One Grows In Life.

The Statesman's Duty Is To Bridge The Gap Between His Nation's Experience And His Vision.

Access To Natural Resources Can Become A Question Of Survival For Many States.

An Expert Is Someone Who Articulates The Needs Of Those In Power.

People Are Generally Amazed That I Would Take An Interest In Any Form That Would Require Me To Stop Talking For Three Hours.

Statesman Create; Ordinary Leaders Consume. The Ordinary Leader Is Satisfied With Ameliorating The Environment, Not Transforming It; A Statesman Must Be A Visionary And An Educator.

I've Often Said That The Desire To Lecture China On How It Should Behave In The World Is Wrong. China Was Around For Thousands Of Years Even Before America Existed. It Could Even Be That China's Growing Power Will Allow Itself To Be Slowed Down. But As Long As This Immense Empire Doesn't Fall Apart, It Will Become An Important Factor In Global Politics.

Leaders Are Responsible Not For Running Public Opinion Polls But For The Consequences Of Their Actions.

90% Of Politicians Give The Other 10% A Bad Name.

One Has To Remember That Every Progress That Has Been Made Towards Peace In The Middle East Has Come Under American Leadership.

I Go Out With Actresses Because I'm Not Apt To Marry One.

Ninety Percent Of The Politicians Give The Other Ten Percent A Bad Reputation.

In A Nuclear War, Even If One Side Were To Come Out Ahead By Systems Analytical Standards, Both Sides Would Be So Weakened, That It Would - They Would Be In The Position Of Europe After The Two World Wars.

In The End, Peace Can Be Achieved Only By Hegemony Or By Balance Of Power.

Accept Everything About Yourself - I Mean Everything, You Are You And That Is The Beginning And The End - No Apologies, No Regrets.

I Grew Up In Germany During The Nazi Period, And I Came To This Country When I Was 15. And Then I Had To Work In A Factory Because We Had No Resources. And I Went To Night School. So, It Was Not A Rational Ambition For Me To Become A World Statesman.

In Relations With Many Domestically Weak Countries, A Radio Transmitter Can Be A More Effective Form Of Pressure Than A Squadron B-52s.

The China Of The 1970s Was A Communist Dictatorship. The China Of The Twenty-first Century Is A One-party State Without A Firm Ideological Foundation, More Similar To Mexico Under The Pri Than Russia Under Stalin. But The Measurement Of The Political And The Economic Evolution Has Not Yet Been Completed, And Is One Of The Weak Points Of The System.

In My Life, I Have Almost Always Been On The Side Of Active Foreign Policy. But You Need To Know With Whom You Are Cooperating. You Need Reliable Partners.

You Become A Superpower By Being Strong But Also By Being Wise And By Being Farsighted. But No State Is Strong Or Wise Enough To Create A World Order Alone.

It Is Barely Conceivable That There Are People Who Like War.

The Test Of Policy Is How It Ends, Not How It Begins. Foreign Policy Is The Art Of Establishing Priorities. Demonization Is Not A Policy; It Is An Alibi For The Absence Of One. The Test Is Not Absolute Satisfaction But Balanced Dissatisfaction.

I Am Against Portraying China As The Demon Of The Global Community. China Has Grasped More Quickly Than Other Countries What Globalization Means And What It Demands. The Country Has Learned How To Use Other People's Innovations For Itself. India, Incidentally, Is Not Far Behind China In This Respect. Both Are Not Nations In The European Sense, But Rather Cultural Communities With Enormous Markets. The Challenge Of The Future Is To Work Out How To Deal With That.

It Is Not A Matter Of What Is True That Counts, But A Matter Of What Is Perceived To Be True.

In Asia, The Nation State Still Is Extremely Vital, And Of Course, Then In Africa, A Whole New Pattern Is Emerging Because The States In Africa Reflected The Preferences Of The Colonial Powers When They Were Established.

This Country Cannot Afford To Tear Itself Apart On A Partisan Basis On Issues So Vital To Our National Security.

In The Short Term, It Would Not Have Made It Possible To Resume Relations, Because In The Chinese Mind, The Humiliation Of China Started With The Annexation Of Taiwan By Japan. If The United States Had Suddenly Declared Taiwan As A Separate State - For Which We Would Have Had No Support Among Other Nations - The Consequences Would Have Been Giving Up Our Relationship With China And Committing Ourselves To A Long-term Conflict With China.

Certainly Nothing Is Easier Than To Rewrite History. If We Had Made Taiwan A Separate State, It Would Have Led To A Fundamental Conflict With China, And Probably To War. Certainly In The Long Term, It Would Have Led To War.

The Gorbachev Period Is Conceived As An Abandonment Of Historic Russian Positions. So This Is The Framework, In My View, In Which Putin Operates.

The Important Thing Is To Do The Right Thing. Then Credibility Will Follow.

Important Things

The British Capitalize On Their Accent When They Don't Want You To Know What They're Saying. But If You Wake Them Up At 4 A.m., They Speak Perfect English, The Same As We Do.

The Emergence Of A Unified Europe Is One Of The Most Revolutionary Events Of Our Time.

We Cannot Give Russia Veto Over Deployment Of Forces On Nato Territory. But We Have To Understand Their Particular Sensitivities, And, Therefore, There Should Be A Dialogue On These Issues.

With Proper Tactics, Nuclear War Need Not Be As Destructive As It Appears.

Art Is Man's Expression Of His Joy In Labor.

Any Fact That Needs To Be Disclosed Should Be Put Out Now Or As Quickly As Possible, Because Otherwise The Bleeding Will Not End.

For The West, The Demonization Of Vladimir Putin Is Not A Policy; It Is An Alibi For The Absence Of One. Putin Is A Serious Strategist – On The Premises Of Russian History. Understanding Us Values And Psychology Are Not His Strong Suits. Nor Has Understanding Russian History And Psychology Been A Strong Point Among Us Policymakers.’

The Defining Issue Is That The Government In Taiwan Was Considered To Be The Government Of All Of China, And The Authorities In Beijing Were Not Recognized As A Government Of China. So Taiwan Was The Residuary For All Of China.

President Nixon In His Inaugural Address Indicated That He Wanted An Era Of Negotiation. Our Reasoning Was That Whatever Our Ideological Differences, Whatever Our Geopolitical Differences, We Were Condemned To Coexistence By Nuclear Weapons.

In His Essay, ‘perpetual Peace,’ The Philosopher, Immanuel Kant, Argued That Perpetual Peace Would Eventually Come To The World In One Of Two Ways, By Human Insight Or By Conflicts And Catastrophes Of A Magnitude That Left Humanity No Other Choice. We Are At Such A Juncture.

This Is Awful. Do It Again.

The Vietnam War Required Us To Emphasize The National Interest Rather Than Abstract Principles. What President Nixon And I Tried To Do Was Unnatural. And That Is Why We Didn't Make It.

We Cannot Always Assure The Future Of Our Friends; We Have A Better Chance Of Assuring Our Future If We Remember Who Our Friends Are.

It Is Steady, Reliable, Tough. It Never Yields To Panic. It Is Never Defeated One-sidedly. It Achieves Everything Attainable By Character And Tenacity.

I Don't Have A Brief For Every Single Reaction Of Israel, But I Think It Is Important That The Political Negotiations Occur Free Of The Threat Of Terrorism.

I Can Think Of No Faster Way To Unite The American People Behind George W. Bush Than A Terrorist Attack On An American Target Overseas. And I Believe George W. Bush Will Quickly Unite The American People Through His Foreign Policy.

Becoming Conscious Is Of Course A Sacrilege Against Nature; It Is As Though You Had Robbed The Unconscious Of Something. The Nice Thing About Being A Celebrity Is That If You Bore People They Think It's Their Fault.

At Any Rate, Mutually Assured Destruction Was Never Our Policy.

Leaders Must Invoke An Alchemy Of Great Vision.

For The Soul Of France Is Masterful History, Brilliantly Researched, And Hard To Put Down.

For Any Student Of History, Change Is The Law Of Life. Any Attempt To Contain It Guarantees An Explosion Down The Road; The More Rigid The Adherence To The Status Quo, The More Violent The Ultimate Outcome Will Be.

I Do Not Believe That Putin Intends To Leave Office In A Cold War Atmosphere With The United States.

Well, I Don't Know Whether It Caused Anguish In China, But It Was Not A Wise Way To Proceed. But One Has To Remember That It Was The First Experience. And In A Republican Administration, There Is A Conservative Wing That Looks At China As The Last Embodiment Of Communism, Which Therefore Tends Towards A More Bellicose Rhetoric Anyway Than I Would. It's Not The Dominant Element, But Every Once In A While They Get A Crack At Public Statement.

From A Geo-strategic Point Of View, I Consider Iran A Bigger Problem Than The Islamic State. Isis Is A Group Of Adventurers With A Very Aggressive Ideology. But They Have To Conquer More And More Territory Before They Can Became A Geo-strategic, Permanent Reality. I Think A Conflict With Isis - Important As It Is - Is More Manageable Than A Confrontation With Iran.

You Know, This Is A Very Strange Phenomenon. I Keep Reading That In American Newspapers, And I Keep Reading Extensive Speculations. I Meet With The Chinese Leaders Periodically, And While I Don't Say They've Endorsed The Missile Shield, It Has Not Been In The Forefront Of Their Discussions.

Well, The Capacity Of French Intellectuals To Understand A Texan Way Of Thinking Is Finite.

Depopulation Should Be The Highest Priority Of Foreign Policy Towards The Third World, Because The Us Economy Will Require Large And Increasing Amounts Of Minerals From Abroad, Especially From Less Developed Countries

Clearly Security Without Values Is Like A Ship Without A Rudder. But Values Without Security Are Like A Rudder Without A Ship.

Covert Action Should Not Be Confused With Missionary Work.

We Believe That Peace Is At Hand.

We Have Three Things In Common: Irish Wives, The Ability To Speak For 17 Minutes Without A Verb, And The Fact That We Both Speak With An Accent.

China Is A Country With A Record Of Continuous Self-government Going Back 4,000 Years, The Only Society That Has Achieved This. One Must Start With The Assumption That They Must Have Learnt Something About The Requirements For Survival, And It Is Not Always To Be Assumed That We Know It Better Than They Do.

One Of The Hardest Things For The President Is To Distinguish The Routine Issues That Come Through From The Essential Issues That Affect The Long Term, And Not To Let Himself Get Sucked Into The Battles Of The Bureaucracy For Marginal Issues, And To Keep Them Focused And To Keep His Mind Clear On What The Fundamental Things Are That He Has To Accomplish.

University Politics Are Vicious Precisely Because The Stakes Are So Small.

We Are Used To Dealing With Problems That Have A Solution And That Can Be Solved In A Finite Period. But We're At The Beginning Of A Long Period Of Adjustment That Does Not Have A Clear-cut Terminal Point, And In Which Our Wisdom And Sophistication And Understanding Has To Be One Of The Key Elements.

Historically When There Is A Rising Power Like China, It Has Usually Led To Confrontations Between The Rising Power And The Existing Dominant Powers. And When You Have A Shift Of The Center Of Gravity Of World Affairs From The Atlantic To The Pacific, Then You Have An Additional Element.

The Russian Empire Under Czars And Commissars Has Been Hard To Deal With For Other Countries.

Democracy Is Too Important To Leave Up To The Votes Of The People.

The Nuclear Weapons Were Not Useful For The Achievement Of Political Objectives.

I Don't Think We Should Pay People To Fight Terrorism. I Would Be Amazed If They Asked For Anything In Return.

Create The Impression Of Endless Willingness To Compromise And You Almost Invite Deadlines. That's The Challenge We Now Have In North Korea And Have Had In North Korea For 10 Years. In This Sense, Diplomacy And Foreign Policy And Other Elements Of Political Activity Have To Be Closely Linked And Have To Be Understood By The Negotiators

In The 1960s, I Would Have Considered China With Its Cpc An Ideologically More Dynamic Country Than The Soviet Union. But The Soviet Union Was Strategically More Threatening.

Almost Every Peace Process That Has Gone On Between The Arab Side And Israel, The United States Has Been Somewhat Isolated Because Most Of The Countries In The World, What They Really Want Is To Accept The Arab Peace Plan Or So-called Peace Plan, Which In Its Present Form Would Lead To The Destruction Of Israel.

In My Particular Case Foreign Policy Happens To Be My Hobby, My Consuming Interest. I Had Spent Decades Studying It.

The Attitude Of The West And Of Russia Towards A Crisis Like Ukraine Is Diametrically Different. The West Is Trying To Establish The Legality Of Any Established Border. For Russia, Ukraine Is Part Of The Russian Patrimony. A Russian State Was Created Around Kiev About 1,200 Years Ago. Ukraine Itself Has Been Part Of Russia For 500 Years, And I Would Say Most Russians Consider It Part Of Russian Patrimony. The Ideal Solution Would Be To Have A Ukraine Like Finland Or Austria That Can Be A Bridge Between These Two Rather Than An Outpost.

We Must Learn To Distinguish Morality From Moralizing.

I Don't Consider China A Communist State, No. I Know That Sounds Paradoxical, But It's My View.

Our Concern For Human Rights Comes To The Fore When There Are Gross Violations Of Human Decencies. Then Other Countries, Including China, Must Recognize That This Affects The American Attitude Towards Their Country. But Towards What Precise Institutions Will It Evolve? I Think We Ought To Leave Something To History.

To Be An Enemy Of America Can Be Dangerous, But To Be A Friend Is Fatal

There Are Some People Who Think That At Some Time In The Future, China May Challenge Us For Supremacy In The Pacific, And Therefore, What Do We Do Today To Prevent That? And You, Of Course, Will Say That We Will Try To Thwart Any Economic Progress In China. If We Engaged In Such A Policy, We Would Turn A Billion-plus People Into Nationalist Opponents Of The United States.

It Was A Greek Tragedy. Nixon Was Fulfilling His Own Nature. Once It Started It Could Not End Otherwise.

They [american Forces] Are There As An Expression Of The American National Interest To Prevent The Iranian Combination Of Imperialism And Fundamentalist Ideology From Dominating A Region On Which The Energy Supplies Of The Industrial Democracies Depend.

My Country's History, Mr. President, Tells Us That It Is Possible To Fashion Unity While Cherishing Diversity, That Common Action Is Possible Despite The Variety Of Races, Interests, And Beliefs We See Here In This Chamber. Progress And Peace And Justice Are Attainable. So We Say To All Peoples And Governments: Let Us Fashion Together A New World Order.

World Government

Left To Its Own Devices, The State Department Machinery Tends Toward Inertia Rather Than Creativity; It Is Always On The Verge Of Turning Itself Into An Enormous Cable Machine.

Everybody Who Has Dealt With China Over An Extended Period Of Time Has Come To More Or Less The Same Conclusions. There Are Nuances Of Differences, But Not Fundamental Differences. I Think That President Bush Was Heading In This Direction, And I Have No Doubt That He Will Again Wind Up In This Position. But Right Now He Has To Be Preoccupied With The Atrocity Committed In New York And Washington.

It Is One Of History's Ironies That Communism, Advertised As A Classless Society, Tended To Breed A Privileged Class Of Feudal Proportions.

Countries Do Not Assume Burdens Because It Is Fair, Only Because It Is Necessary.

I Would Have Said, Before The World Trade Center Events, That He Would Try To Get A Normal Relationship With China - Making Clear To China What The Limits Are Of What America Can Accept, But Also Showing Understanding For Some Of Chinese Necessities. I Thought He Was Moving Towards The Position That I Have More Or Less Advocated.

A Leader Does Not Deserve The Name Unless He Is Willing Occasionally To Stand Alone.

I Would Say The Special Experience Of American Wartime Policy In The Last 40 Years, From Vietnam On, Is That The War Itself Became Controversial In The Country And That The Most Important Thing We Need In The Current Situation Is, Whatever Disagreements There May Be On Tactics, That The Legitimacy Of The War Itself Does Not Become A Subject Of Controversy. We Have To Start With The Assumption, Obviously, That Whatever Administration Is Conducting A War Wants To End It.

In The Current [carter] Administration, Who Can Use The White House Swimming Pool And Tennis Courts Is Decided At The Very Highest Level. President Ford Did Not Bother Himself With Such Minor Details. He Let Me Swim In The Pool. He Only Got Upset When I Tried To Walk Across The Water.

The Emigration Of Jews From The Soviet Union Is Not An Objective Of American Foreign Policy. And If They Put Jews Into Gas Chambers In The Soviet Union, It Is Not An American Concern. Maybe A Humanitarian Concern.

The Chinese, On The Other Hand, Were In The Position Of Having An American Military Spy Plane On A Chinese Military Base And They Had Their Own Internal Problems To Deal With. At First, The Chinese Weren't All That Belligerent. They Were Just Stalling To Get Their Own Bureaucracy In Line.

Every Civilization That Has Ever Existed Has Ultimately Collapsed. History Is A Tale Of Efforts That Failed, Or Aspirations That Weren’t Realized. So, As A Historian, One Has To Live With A Sense Of The Inevitability Of Tragedy.

I See The Future Of China As Growth. I Think That Historically China Has Often Gone Through Periods Of Consolidation, And Then Periods Of Sort Of Weakening Central Authority. They Undoubtedly Face Tremendous Challenges.

He [deng Xiaoping] Said That He Did Not Understand Why We Failed To Grasp That The Alternative Was Not Democracy, But Total Chaos And Risking All The Reforms That Had Been Achieved.

What China Would Do, I Cannot Predict. China Has All But Given Up The Claim To The Use Of Force, Except In The Circumstance Of Taiwan Declaring Its Independence. That Is A Huge Step Forward Over What The Situation Was Many Years Ago.

A Bluff Taken Seriously Is More Useful Than A Serious Threat Interpreted As A Bluff.

Donald Trump Is A Phenomenon That Foreign Countries Haven't Seen.

I Don't Know What Happens In The Next Years. But I Cannot Now Design A Policy In Which We Try To Keep China From Developing, Because In Some Years, If They Develop, They Might Be Rich Enough To Challenge Us, And Adopt The Principle That We Will Hold Down Any State That Might In The Future Become Strong. That Would Make Us A World Empire For Which We Wouldn't Have The Talents Or The Convictions.

The Longer I Am Out Of Office, The More Infallible I Appear To Myself.

The Superpowers Often Behave Like Two Heavily Armed Blind Men Feeling Their Way Around A Room, Each Believing Himself In Mortal Peril From The Other, Whom He Assumes To Have Perfect Vision. Each Side Should Know That Frequently Uncertainty, Compromise, And Incoherence Are The Essence Of Policymaking. Yet Each Tends To Ascribe To The Other A Consistency, Foresight, And Coherence That Its Own Experience Belies. Of Course, Over Time, Even Two Armed Blind Men Can Do Enormous Damage To Each Other, Not To Speak Of The Room.

World Population Needs To Be Decreased By 50%

There Are Only Two Reasons To Sit In The Back Row Of An Airplane: Either You Have Diarrhea, Or You're Anxious To Meet People Who Do.

I Also Do Not Believe That The United States Can Let Itself Be Driven Into A Political Role By Escalating Terrorism, And Therefore, The Leaders Of The Arab World And Arafat Should Do Their Utmost To Put An End To This And Then The United States Should Do Its Utmost To Produce A Political Solution.

Now When I Bore People At A Party They Think It's Their Fault.

Now We Have A Whole Series Of Problems - Energy, Environment, Proliferation - Which Go Beyond The Nation. And We Also Know That A Conflict Between Major Powers Would Be A Catastrophe For Which There Is No Compensation In Anything You Can Gain.

If I Should Ever Be Captured, I Want No Negotiation - And If I Should Request A Negotiation From Captivity They Should Consider That A Sign Of Duress.

There Cannot Be A Crisis Next Week. My Schedule Is Already Full.

Withdrawal Of Us Troops Will Become Like Salted Peanuts To The American Public: The More Us Troops Come Home, The More Will Be Demanded.

If A Chinese Plane Landed At Los Angeles Airport Having Just Bought Down An American Military Plane, He Wouldn't Be Permitted To Leave The Next Day. So Then We Developed A Framework Which Should Have Been Acceptable As A Concept To The Chinese, Namely To Express Regret For The Loss Of Life And Maintain Our Position That We Had A Right To Fly These Missions.

Some Of The Critics Viewed Vietnam As A Morality Play In Which The Wicked Must Be Punished Before The Final Curtain And Where Any Attempt To Salvage Self-respect From The Outcome Compounded The Wrong. I Viewed It As A Genuine Tragedy. No One Had A Monopoly On Anguish.

Competing Pressures Tempt One To Believe That An Issue Deferred Is A Problem Avoided; More Often It Is A Crisis Invited.

Why Should We Flagellate Ourselves For What The Cambodians Did To Each Other?

If Eighty Percent Of Your Sales Come From Twenty Percent Of All Of Your Items, Just Carry Those Twenty Percent.

Obama Is Like A Chess Player Who Is Playing Simultaneous Chess And Has Opened His Game With An Unusual Opening.

A Return To The 1967 Lines And The Abandonment Of The Settlements Near Jerusalem Would Be Such A Psychological Trauma For Israel As To Endanger Its Survival.

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