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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.

-Henry A. Kissinger

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Everybody Who Has Dealt

Henry A. Kissinger

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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.

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More From Henry A. Kissinger

The Mistake We Make With Many People - Not Just Russia - Is That We Believe We Have The Model, And There Is A Sort Of A Condescension In Our Dialogue With Other Societies, Which Was Especially Painful In Several Administrations To Russia. I Think In Russia, The Yeltsin Period Is Not Considered A Period Of Great Achievement, But A Period Of Corruption And Humiliation.

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.

China Has Had A Long And Complex History And Has Managed To Evolve Its Own Culture For 4,000 Years. It Therefore Not Necessarily True That We Know Exactly What Is Best For The Internal Structure Of China.

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.

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

I Have Said There Are Three Principles That Should Be Followed. One, We Should Maintain The "one China" Policy That Every American President Has Articulated, Including President Reagan. Secondly, We Should Make Clear That We Want A Peaceful Resolution. And Three, Taiwan Should Not Challenge That Arrangement In A Way That Will Provoke A Conflict. Those Are Three Perfectly Clear Principles. I Haven't Used Any Of The Other Slogans.

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.

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

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

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.

Well, On The American Side, Every New Administration Has To Cut Its Teeth In A Crisis, Because Before A Crisis, You Don't Really Know What Your Various Subordinates Are Thinking Under Stress.

It Is Always Easy To Divide The World Into Idealists And Power-oriented People. The Idealists Are Presumed To Be The Noble People, And The Power-oriented People Are The Ones That Cause All The World's Trouble.

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.

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

Important Things

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

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

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

I Think Vladimir Putin Will Give Up Power.

The Nice Thing About Being A Celebrity Is That, If You Bore People, They Think It's Their Fault.

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.

Intellectuals Are Cynical And Cynics Have Never Built A Cathedral.

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

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.

I Don't See Why We Need To Stand By And Watch A Country Go Communist Due To The Irresponsibility Of Its Own People.

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.

A Little Uncertainty Is Good For Everyone.

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.

In My View, There's No Doubt That The Soviets Had Infinitely Greater Trouble Holding Their Structure Together Than We Did.

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.

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

University Politics Make Me Long For The Simplicity Of The Middle East.

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

The Absence Of Alternatives Clears The Mind Marvelously.

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

[nixon] Wants A Massive Bombing Campaign In Cambodia. He Doesn't Want To Hear Anything About It. It's An Order, To Be Done. Anything That Flies On Anything That Moves.

I Believe In Freedom Of Expression, And I Believe That Societies Thrive When They Permit Freedom Of Expression.

The Israelis Want Security. The Arabs Want Dignity. And They Consider The Demands Of Each Other As Incompatible.

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.

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.

If You Mean By "military Victory" An Iraqi Government That Can Be Established And Whose Writ Runs Across The Whole Country, That Gets The Civil War Under Control And Sectarian Violence Under Control In A Time Period That The Political Processes Of The Democracies Will Support, I Don't Believe That Is Possible.

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

The Western Concept Of Democracy Is Based On The Idea That The Loser Of An Election Has The Possibility Next Time Round Of Being The Winner. But In The Case Of An Ethnically Or Religiously Divided Country, In Which Minorities Don't Live Peacefully Together, This Necessary Balance Can't Be Properly Guaranteed By Democracy. When Each Ethnic Group Arms Itself, It Is Not Surprising That The Army Of A New State Is Viewed By Part Of The Population As An Ideological Militia.

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.

For My Generation The Relationship With Europe Was The Central Point Of American Foreign Policy. Even During My Time In Government There Was Disagreement, Sometimes Very Strong Disagreement. But They Were All Like Arguments Within A Family. I Am Not Sure If The Generation Which Doesn't Have These Experiences Has The Same View Of Things.

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.

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.

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.

Deng Xiaoping Thought Of Himself As A Great Revolutionary And A Great Reformer. He Had Dismantled The Chinese Communist Management Of The Economy. In My Next-to-last Conversation With Him, Which Was About Six Months Before Tiananmen Square, He Said To Me That His Aim Would Be The Next Phase To Reduce The Communist Party To Philosophical Issues. And I Said, "what's A Philosophical Issue?" And He Said, "well, Like If We Make An Alliance With Russia." Given His View Of Russia, That Was Not The Likeliest Thing That Would Ever Happen.

Realism In Foreign Policy Means Careful Consideration Of All Aspects Pertinent To The Issue, Before Taking A Decision. This Is The Only Way You Can Move From Where You Are To Someplace Else.

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

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 Not Often That Nations Learn From The Past,even Rarer That They Draw The Correct Conclusions From It.

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.

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 Enemies You Make By Taking A Decided Stand Generally Have More Respect For You Than The Friends You Make By Being On The Fence

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.’

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.

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

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

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.

[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

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.

In 10 Years, There Will Be No More Israel.

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

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.

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

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.

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

The Idea Of Abstract Power Only Exists For Academics, Not In Real Life.

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

When You Travel As Secretary, One Problem You Have Is That The Press Comes With You And Wants An Immediate Result Because It Justifies Their Trip. And Sometimes The Best Result Is That You Don't Try To Get A Result But Try To Get An Understanding For The Next Time You Go To Them.

When I First Saw China, There Were No Automobiles. There Were No Supermarkets. There Were No High-rise Buildings. There Were No Consumer Goods. There Were No Restaurants That Were At Least Accessible That Foreigners Could See. It Was A Stalinist Society, And A Very Poor Stalinist Society. So The Economic System Has Totally Changed, And The Private Sector In The Economic System Is Now The Dominant Sector. It Didn't Exist At All As Late As 1979.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

We Believe That Peace Is At Hand.

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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 Public Life Of Every Political Figure Is A Continual Struggle To Rescue An Element Of Choice From The Pressure Of Circumstance.

One Theory Is That We Will Make War Look So Attractive That We Undermine The Deterrent. That's Never Never Land. What We Have Now Would Have Been Enough To Deter Hitler. But We Are Talking In A Different Order Of Reality.

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

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

Americans Believe That You Can Alter People By Conversion, And That Everybody In The World Is A Potential American. The Chinese Also Believe That Their Values Are Universal, But They Do Not Believe That You Can Convert To Becoming A Chinese Unless You Are Born Into It.

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.

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.

I Do Not Know What Will Happen In China Politically. I Do Know That It Is Impossible To Maintain The Communist System Or Probably Even A Strict One-party System When The Economy Becomes So Pluralistic. Now, What Form That Takes And What Institutions Will Evolve, I Do Not Have A Clear View About. I Do Not Think The United States, As A General Principle, Ought To Intervene In This.

We Are All The President's Men.

China Is A One Party State. Sooner Or Later China Will Get To The Point When The New Social Classes, Which Have Emerged Thanks To Economic Success, Will Have To Be Integrated Into The Political System. There Is No Guarantee That This Process Will Run Smoothly.

Guarantees That

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

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

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.

Every Success Is Usually An Admission Ticket To A New Set Of Decisions.

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.

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

If You Control The Food, You Control A Nation. If You Control The Energy, You Control A Region. If You Control The Money, You Control The World.

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

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.

This Is Awful. Do It Again.

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

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.

In A Diplomatic Negotiation, You Always Meet The Same The Other Side All The Time. Even If You Should Succeed In Outsmarting Him Or In Pressuring Him, It Only Sets Up A Cycle In Which He Will Try To Get Even.

Who Controls The Food Supply Controls The People; Who Controls The Energy Can Control Whole Continents; Who Controls Money Can Control The World.

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

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

What Is Applicable Is To Understand That First Of All China Has Undergone A Huge Revolution In The Last Years. Anyone Who Saw China As I Did In 1971 - And For That Matter Even In 1979, Because Not Much Had Changed Between 1971 And 1979 - And Sees China Today, Knows One Is In A Different Economic System.

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

History Is The Memory Of States.

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

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.

I Don't Read Books, I Write Them.

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

I Know Hillary Clinton As A Person. And As A Personal Friend, I Would Say Yes, She'd Be A Good President. But She'd Put Me Under A Great Conflict Of Interest If She Were A Candidate Because I Intend To Support The Republicans.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Behind The Slogans Lay An Intellectual Vacuum.

The Us Must Carry Out Some Act Somewhere In The World Which Shows Its Determination To Continue To Be A World Power.

Conspiracy Theory

Nafta Represents The Single Most Creative Step Towards A New World Order.

I Think That His [obama's] Task Will Be To Develop An Overall Strategy For America In This Period, When Really A New World Order Can Be Created.

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

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

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.

Nixon Had Three Goals: To Win By The Biggest Electoral Landslide In History; To Be Remembered As A Peacemaker; And To Be Accepted By The 'establishment' As An Equal. He Achieved All These Objectives At The End Of 1972 And The Beginning Of 1973. And He Lost Them All Two Months Later-partly Because He Turned A Dream Into An Obsession.

The Essence Of Richard Nixon Is Loneliness.

Transcendentalism

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

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.

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.

There Is No Realism Without An Element Of Idealism.

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

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

We're At A Moment When The International System Is In A Period Of Change Like We Haven't Seen For Several Hundred Years. In Some Parts Of The World, The Nation State, On Which The Existing International System Was Based, Is Either Giving Up Its Traditional Aspects, Like In Europe, Or As In The Middle East, Where It Was Never Really Fully Established, It Is No Longer The Defining Element. So In Those Two Parts Of The World, There Is Tremendous Adjustment In Traditional Concepts.

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

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.

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

The American Formal Position Has Been That We Oppose Violence By Governments Against Their People. That Principle Should Not Be Abandoned.

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

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.

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.

Power Is The Great Aphrodisiac.

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.

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

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

I Do Not Criticize People Who Take A Public Stand On Human Rights Issues. I Express My Respect For Them. But Some People Are More Influential Without A Public Confrontation.

How To Achieve The New World Order

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

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

The Issues Are Too Important To Be Left For The Voters.

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.

Any International System Must Have Two Key Elements For It To Work. One, It Has To Have A Certain Equilibrium Of Power That Makes Overthrowing The System Difficult And Costly. Secondly, It Has To Have A Sense Of Legitimacy.

Well It Did Not Make Excessive Sense To Say That 20 Million People Are The Recognized Government Of A Billion People That Have Their Own Institutions. We Did Not Change It In The Sense That We Said This Has To End, But There Was A U.n. Vote That Transferred The Legitimacy Of China From Taiwan To Beijing. Beijing Was Recognized As The Government Of All Of China. Then, Under President Carter, We Followed What The U.n. Had Already Done Eight Years Earlier.

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.

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

Before The Freedom Of Information Act, I Used To Say At Meetings "the Illegal We Do Immediately. The Unconstitutional Takes A Little Longer." [...] But Since The Freedom Of Information Act, I'm Afraid To Say Things Like That.

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

You're 18 Points Down [in The Polls]... You Might As Well Do What's Right.

Diplomacy: The Art Of Restraining Power.

We Are Not Just Any Nation.

I Wouldn't Say It's A Split. It's A Difference Of Emphasis. It Does Exist Between, I Would Say, The State Department And The Defense Department.

Don't Be Too Ambitious. Do The Most Important Thing You Can Think Of Doing Every Year And Then Your Career Will Take Care Of Itself.

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.

I Have Been Observing China For More Than 30 Years And Am Impressed How Logically And Wisely It Tackles Its Problems. Obviously The International System Could Be Unbalanced By China's Rising Power - If We Don't Prepare Ourselves For The New Competitive Situation, That Is. But It Is An Economic Challenge, Not Aggression On The Level Of Hitler.

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.

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

The Challenge Is Whether China As A Rising Country, The United States As The Superpower, Can Develop A Cooperative Relationship In This Period Before Nationalism Becomes So Dominant In China As A Substitute For Communism, And A Kind Of Self-righteous Isolationism In This Country That Substitutes China For The Soviet Union.

U.s. Policy Toward The Third World Should Be One Of Depopulation

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.

Covert Action Should Not Be Confused With Missionary Work.

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

The Key Decision For A Statesman Is Whether To Commit His Nation Or Not. There Is No Middle Course. Once A Great Nation Commits Itself, It Must Prevail. It Will Acquire No Kudos For Translating Its Inner Doubts Into Hesitation.

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.

An Iranian Moderate Is One Who Has Run Out Of Ammunition.

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

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

The Members Of The Islamic Staye Have Cut The Throat Of An American On Television. This Is An Insult To The United States, Which Requires That We Demonstrate That This Is Not An Act That Is Free. I Would Strongly Favor A Strong Attack On Isis For A Period That Is Related To The Murder Of The American.

I Am Being Frank About Myself In This Book. I Tell Of My First Mistake On Page 850.

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

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.

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

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.

If Peace Is Equated Simply With The Absence Of War, It Can Become Abject Pacifism That Turns The World Over To The Most Ruthless.

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

Most High Officials Leave Office With The Perceptions And Insights With Which They Entered.

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