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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.

-Henry A. Kissinger

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I've Often Said That

Henry A. Kissinger

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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.

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More From Henry A. Kissinger

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Whatever Must Happen Ultimately Should Happen Immediately.

You Should Not Think That You Can Shape History Only By Your Will. This Is Also Why I'm Against The Concept Of Intervention When You Don't Know Its Ultimate Implications.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Every American President, Regardless Of Party, Has Said That America Has An Intense Interest In A Peaceful Resolution. And I Think It Should Be Left At That.

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

History Knows No Resting Places And No Plateaus

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

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.

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.

America Has Made It Very Clear In Several Administrations That If There Is An Attack By China On Taiwan, The United States Is Very Likely To Resist.

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

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

In Crises The Most Daring Course Is Often Safest.

America Has No Permanent Friends Or Enemies, Only Interests.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 Are All The President's Men.

Every Civilization That Has Ever Existed Has Ultimately Collapsed.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Congratulations

How To Achieve The New World Order

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.

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 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.

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.

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

The Capacity To Admire Others Is Not My Most Fully Developed Trait.

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.

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

We Must Learn To Distinguish Morality From Moralizing.

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 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.

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.

Let Us Fashion Together A New World Order.

World Government

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

Does Anyone Have Any Questions For My Answers?

If We Do What Is Necessary, All The Odds Are In Our Favor.

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.

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

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

Even A Paranoid Can Have Enemies.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

I Knew Deng Xiaoping When He Came Out Of Prison. He Had, After All, Been Imprisoned For Nearly Ten Years By Mao. I Know What China Looked Like Before He Took Over, And So In My Own Mind, I Don't Think Of Deng Xiaoping As An Oppressor. I Think Of Somebody Who, Faced With That Crisis, Made A Very Painful And Decision With Which I Cannot Agree. But I Also Think Of Him As A Great Reformer.

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

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

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

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.

I Have Great Respect For The Taiwanese. They Have Done An Extraordinary Job. But It Was Not A Sustainable Position To Say That The Legitimate Government Of China Resides In Taiwan, Which At That Time Didn't Have Much Contact With The Mainland.

Covert Action Should Not Be Confused With Missionary Work.

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

History Is The Memory Of States.

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.

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

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.

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.

We Believe That Peace Is At Hand.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Would Food Be Considered An Instrument Of National Power? ... Is The U.s. Prepared To Accept Food Rationing To Help People Who Can't/won't Control Their Population Growth?

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.

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.

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

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.

The Elderly Are Useless Eaters.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Behind The Slogans Lay An Intellectual Vacuum.

Power Is The Ultimate Aphrodisiac.

This Is Awful. Do It Again.

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

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

I Don't Read Books, I Write Them.

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

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.

Let Me Make My Point About Vietnam. When The Nixon Initiation Came Into Office, There Were 550,000 Americans In Combat. And Ending The War Was Not A Question Of Turning Off A Television Channel. And So, Debating On How We Got There And What Judgments Were Made Was Not Going To Help Us.

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

[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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Power Is The Great Aphrodisiac.

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

The Absence Of Alternatives Clears The Mind Marvelously.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Conspiracy Theory

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

The History Of Things That Didn't Happen Has Never Been Written.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

No Foreign Policy - No Matter How Ingenious - Has Any Chance Of Success If It Is Born In The Minds Of A Few And Carried In The Hearts Of None.

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

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

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

No Country Can Act Wisely Simultaneously In Every Part Of The Globe At Every Moment Of Time.

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.

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.

I Do Not Stand On Protocol. If You Just Call Me Excellency, It Will Be Okay.

In 10 Years, There Will Be No More Israel.

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

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

Diplomacy: The Art Of Restraining Power.

Leaders Must Invoke An Alchemy Of Great Vision.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

There Is No Realism Without An Element Of Idealism.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

The Convictions That Leaders Have Formed Before Reaching High Office Are The Intellectual Capital They Will Consume As Long As They Continue In Office.

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

Moderation Is A Virtue Only In Those Who Are Thought To Have An Alternative.

I Think China Will Do Nothing To Obstruct It, And They Probably Will Go Along With It.

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