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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.

-Henry A. Kissinger

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I Have Said There

Henry A. Kissinger

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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.

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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.

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.

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

If You Do Not Know Where You Are Going, Every Road Will Get You Nowhere

To Have The United States Suddenly Come Up With A Peace Proposal After A Whole Series Of Terrorist Attacks Is Going To Show To The World That This Sort Of Method Is Something That Western Societies Can't Stand.

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

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.

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.

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

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

To Have Striven So Hard, To Have Molded A Public Personality Out Of So Amorphous An Identity, To Have Sustained That Superhuman Effort Only To End With Every Weakness Disclosed And Every Error Compounding The Downfall--that Was A Fate Of Biblical Proportions. Evidently The Deity Would Not Tolerate The Presumption That All Can Be Manipulated; An Object Lesson Of The Limits Of Human Presumption Was Necessary.

If The Six-nation Forums Dealing With Iran And North Korea Suffer Comparable Failures, The Consequence Will Be A World Of Unchecked Proliferation, Not Controlled By Either Governing Principles Or Functioning Institutions. A Modern, Strong, Peaceful Iran Could Become A Pillar Of Stability And Progress In The Region. This Cannot Happen Unless Iran's Leaders Decide Whether They Are Representing A Cause Or A Nation - Whether Their Basic Motivation Is Crusading Or International Cooperation. The Goal Of The Diplomacy Of The Six Should Be To Oblige Iran To Confront This Choice.

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

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.

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

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

We Believe That Peace Is At Hand.

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

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 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.

John Paul Ii Was One Of The Greatest Men Of The Last Century. Perhaps The Greatest.

We Are All The President's Men.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.’

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Tutelage Is A Comfortable Relationship For The Senior Partner, But It Is Demoralizing In The Long Run. It Breeds Illusions Of Omniscience On One Side And Attitudes Of Impotent Irresponsibility On The Other.

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

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.

Power Is The Ultimate Aphrodisiac.

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

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.

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

The Task Of The Leader Is To Get His People From Where They Are To Where They Have Not Been. The Public Does Not Fully Understand The World Into Which It Is Going. Leaders Must Invoke An Alchemy Of Great Vision. Those Leaders Who Do Not Are Ultimately Judged Failures, Even Though They May Be Popular At The Moment.

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

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.

I Had An Opportunity To Express My Views, Yes. I Agreed With The Approach Which We Took, Namely, To Make A Distinction Between The Loss Of Life Of The Chinese Pilot And Our Military Operations Outside Territorial Waters Or Territorial Limits.

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.

Military Men Are Just Dumb, Stupid Animals To Be Used As Pawns In Foreign Policy.

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

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

Intellectual Capital

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The Elderly Are Useless Eaters.

Each Success Only Buys An Admission Ticket To A More Difficult Problem.

Congratulations

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.

Does Anyone Have Any Questions For My Answers?

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

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

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.

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

People Think Responsibility Is Hard To Bear. It's Not. I Think That Sometimes It Is The Absence Of Responsibility That Is Harder To Bear. You Have A Great Feeling Of Impotence.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Important Things

Whatever Must Happen Ultimately Should Happen Immediately.

Blessed Are The People Whose Leaders Can Look Destiny In The Eye Without Flinching But Also Without Attempting To Play God.

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

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

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.

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.

Committees Are Consumers And Sometimes Sterilizers Of Ideas, Rarely Creators Of Them.

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

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

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

Most Foreign Policies That History Has Marked Highly, In Whatever Country, Have Been Originated By Leaders Who Were Opposed By Experts.

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

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.

Intellectuals Are Cynical And Cynics Have Never Built A Cathedral.

History Knows No Resting Places And No Plateaus

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

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.

You Can't Make War In The Middle East Without Egypt And You Can't Make Peace Without Syria.

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.

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.

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

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.

This Is Awful. Do It Again.

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.

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

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

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

When I Became Security Advisor, I Became Familiar With The So-called Siop War Plans, I Called In Secretary Mcnamara And Asked Him What They Were Hiding From Me, Because I Couldn't Believe That The National Policy Would Foresee Such A Level Of Destructiveness.

Our Problem Was That In The American Approach To Soviet Affairs Policy Has Oscillated Between People Who Take An Essentially Psychological Approach And People Who Take An Essentially Theological Approach, And The Two Really Meet. The Psychologists Try To "understand" The Soviet Union. And Try To Ease Its Alleged Fears. The Theologians Say The Soviets Are Evil.

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

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

Behind The Slogans Lay An Intellectual Vacuum.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Well, He Keeps Saying That, And As Defense Secretary, Of Course He Has To Think Of A Lot Of Potential Enemies. I Do Not Think It's A Wise Course To Articulate This Or To Base Our Policy On It. And I Do Not See Under Modern Circumstances What We Would Be Fighting About.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Even Paranoid People Have Enemies.

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 Greatest Need Of The Contemporary International System Is An Agreed Concept Of Order.

I Think A Resumption Of The Cold War Would Be A Historic Tragedy. If A Conflict Is Avoidable, On A Basis Reflecting Morality And Security, One Should Try To Avoid It.

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.

I Don't Read Books, I Write Them.

A Little Uncertainty Is Good For Everyone.

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.

You Should Not Go To War For The Privilege Of Withdrawal. You Need To Define Your Objective And The Outcome, And It Cannot Be The Removal Of One Man.

Leaders Must Invoke An Alchemy Of Great Vision.

The Essence Of Richard Nixon Is Loneliness.

Transcendentalism

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Far Too Often The Ukrainian Issue Is Posed As A Showdown: Whether Ukraine Joins The East Or The West. But If Ukraine Is To Survive And Thrive, It Must Not Be Either Side's Outpost Against The Other - It Should Function As A Bridge Between Them.

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

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.

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.

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

There Is No Realism Without An Element Of Idealism.

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.

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.

Let Us Fashion Together A New World Order.

World Government

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.

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.

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

Donald Rumsfeld Is The Most Ruthless Man I Have Ever Met? And I Mean That As A Compliment.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Before There Was The Soviet Union That Could Inflame Matters. Now You Have States Not As Powerful As The Soviet Union, But States Like Iraq, Like Iran, And To Some Extent Syria, Having Made It Possible For Some Of These Groups To Operate. So It Is A Very Difficult Situation.

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.

Our Nation Is Uniquely Endowed To Play A Creative And Decisive Role In The New Order Which Is Taking Form Around Us.

Diplomacy: The Art Of Restraining Power.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

I Grew Up As A Discriminated Minority In A Dictatorship, So Obviously The Issue Of Human Rights Is A Matter Of Concern For Me.

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.

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

Power Is The Great Aphrodisiac.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

We Must Learn To Distinguish Morality From Moralizing.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

We Are Not Just Any Nation.

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 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 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.

The Position Is That Stability And Peace In Asia Depend On A Cooperative Relationship Between China And The United States.

America Has No Permanent Friends Or Enemies, Only Interests.

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

[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.

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.

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.

With Respect To The Relationship Between Nuclear Weapons And The Advent Of Détente, One Has To Consider Two Things. One, The Nature Of Nuclear Weapons In Themselves, And Secondly, The Advent Of Nuclear Parity.

Henceforth The Adequacy Of Any Military Establishment Will Be Tested By Its Ability To Preserve The Peace.

In 10 Years, There Will Be No More Israel.

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