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On The Foreign Policy Side, There's The Risk Of Being Too Spontaneous And Too Disruptive Where You End Up Doing More Harm Than Damage. And Figuring Out That Balance Is Where Having Strong People Around You Matters.

-Robert M. Gates

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On The Foreign Policy

Robert M. Gates

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On The Foreign Policy Side, There's The Risk Of Being Too Spontaneous And Too Disruptive Where You End Up Doing More Harm Than Damage. And Figuring Out That Balance Is Where Having Strong People Around You Matters.

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Even When I Was At Cia, I'd Go To Visit Foreign Leaders And I'd Say, 'you Know, I'm Not A Diplomat. I'm Just An Old Cia Guy'... I Said, 'if I Wanted To Be Diplomatic, I'd Have Been A Diplomat.'

Soviet Foreign Ministers Would Come In To See The President All The Time, Routinely. Jimmy Carter Stopped That After The Invasion Of Afghanistan. Ronald Reagan Resumed It In 1984, I Think. And So The Fact Of A Meeting Like That I Think Is Not That Big A Deal.

Congress Is Best Viewed From A Distance—the Farther The Better—because Up Close, It Is Truly Ugly. I Saw Most Of Congress As Uncivil, Incompetent At Fulfilling Their Basic Constitutional Responsibilities (such As Timely Appropriations), Micromanagerial, Parochial, Hypocritical, Egotistical, Thin-skinned And Prone To Put Self (and Re-election) Before Country.

It Has Become Clear That America's Civilian Institutions Of Diplomacy And Development Have Been Chronically Undermanned And Underfunded For Far Too Long - Relative To What We Spend On The Military, And More Important, Relative To The Responsibilities And Challenges Our Nation Has Around The World.

I Think When It Comes To The Issues, I'd Advise Him To Stick To The Script. But, I Mean, Donald Trump Is Going To Have Some Very Tough Conversations And He's Going To Be Talking About Some Very Tough And Complicated Issues In All Of The Places That He Visits.i Think Anytime A President Does Things That Are Humanizing, I Think It's - It's Good.

Congress Is Best Viewed From A Distance - The Farther The Better - Because Up Close, It Is Truly Ugly.

I Didn't Think This Whole Business With Director James Comey Was Handled Well. So There Are Sort Of Day-to-day Aspects Of The Operation That I Think Are Really Troublesome. And I Know That There Are A Lot Of People In The Country Who Have Lots Of Issues With Decisions That Donald Trump Has Making On The Domestic Side.

I Think, On The Foreign Policy Side, That There Is A Need For Disruption. We've Had Three Administrations Follow A Pretty Consistent Policy Toward North Korea, And It Really Hasn't Gotten Us Anywhere.

In My Opinion, Any Future Defense Secretary Who Advises The President To Again Send A Big American Land Army Into Asia Or Into The Middle East Or Africa Should 'have His Head Examined,' As General Macarthur So Delicately Put It.

I've Been Very Sensitive For A Long Time To The Repeated Pattern, During Economic Hard Times Or After A War, Of The United States' Essentially Unilaterally Disarming.

Future U.s. Political Leaders – Those For Whom The Cold War Was Not The Formative Experience That It Was For Me – May Not Consider The Return On America’s Investment In Nato Worth The Cost.

There's A Lot Of Books Out There About How You Lead Change In Business, But I've Certainly Not Seen Any... On How You Do That In Public Institutions.

Things Have Gotten So Nasty In Washington.

I Think In The Policies That Have Been Followed Since The President Donald Trump Came Into Office, There Really Hasn't Been Any Slack Cut For The Russians. And I Think One Of The Things That Has Surprised People Has Been That The Relationship Between The United States And Russia Has In Fact Deteriorated Since The Election.

No Policy Has Proved More Successful In Making Friends For The United States, During The Cold War And Since, Than Educating Students From Abroad At Our Colleges And Universities.

There Will Be Boots On The Ground If There's To Be Any Hope Of Success In The Strategy.

Well, Israel, Obviously, Thinks Of The Iranian Nuclear Program As An Existential Threat To Israel.

There Is No International Problem That Can Be Addressed Or Solved Without The Engagement And Leadership Of The United States And Everybody In The World Knows That, Its Just Fact Of Life. So Sometimes I Think We Could Conduct Ourselves With A Little More Humility.

I Wish I Could Set Deadlines For The Congress, But That's Just Not The Way The Constitution Is Written.

Some People Have Said, In So Many Words, That I'm Kind Of Wooly-headed In Believing That The Iranians Would See Not Having Nuclear Weapons As More In Their Security Interest Than Not.

Most Governments Lie To Each Other. That's The Way Business Gets Done.

Government Lies

I Had No Difficulty As Secretary Of Defense Moving From The Bush Administration To The Obama Administration.

I Think It's Kind Of A Stretch. You Know, It's One Thing If Somebody Working For The U.s. Government Has Sold Secrets To The Other Side, It's Another If They Have Something In Their Personal Life That They're Hiding For Which They Could Be Blackmailed. Having Evidence That They Didn't Tell The Truth To Somebody In The Same Building Where They Work, Maybe It's Just The Old Intel Guy, Is - It's A Problem.

Every Time We Have Come To The End Of A Conflict, Somehow We Have Persuaded Ourselves That The Nature Of Mankind And The Nature Of The World Have Changed On An Enduring Basis And So We Have Dismantle Our Military And Intelligence Capabilities. My Hope Is That As We Wind Down In Iraq And Whatever The Level Of Our Commitment In Afghanistan, That We Not Forget The Basic Nature Of Humankind Has Not Changed.

Well, What I've Said Is That The War In Iraq Will Always Be Clouded By How It Began, Which Was A Wrong Premise, That There Were In Fact No Weapons Of Nuclear - Weapons Of Mass Destruction.

Mass Destruction

One Of The Toughest Battles In Intelligence Is Combating Conventional Wisdom.

Conventional Wisdom

I Mean, When You Get Down To Very Low Numbers Of Nuclear Weapons, And You Contemplate Going To Zero, How Do You Deal With The Reality Of That Technology Being Available To Almost Any Country That Seeks To Pursue It? And What Conditions Do You Put In Place?

I Think That Vladimir Putin Is Certainly Getting A Lot Of Publicity For What The Russians Are Doing. And I'm Not Sure That's Unwelcome To Him. I Think This Is A Guy Who Saw The U.s. Basically Come Out Against Him In His Reelection Campaign In 2012. He Saw The U.s. Being Behind All Of The Color Revolutions In Eastern Europe And In Georgia And Ukraine And So On. So His View Is The West Has Been Interfering In His Politics For Years.

When I Was The Director Of Central Intelligence In The Early '90s, I Tried To Get The Air Force To Partner With Us In Building Drones. And They Didn't Want To, Because They Had No Pilots.

One Of My Favorite Little Sayings Is, 'to Avoid Criticism, Say Nothing, Do Nothing, Be Nothing.

The Reality Is, The United States Has Global Interests. Our Defense Budget Is About The Same As The Defense Budgets Or Military Budgets Of Every Other Country In The World Put Together.

I've Seen, All Too Often In My Career, People Coming In To Lead Agencies And Organizations And Trying To Impose Change From The Top Down. Never Works. You Never Have Enough Time.

Defense Is Not Like Other Discretionary Spending.

A Wild And Crazy Weekend Involves Sitting On The Front Porch, Smoking A Cigar, Reading A Book.

I Think That - That The Disruptive Nature, The Tough Talk On North Korea, The Military Deployments, Sending The Missile Defense System To South Korea, I Think These Are All Good Things To Have Done.

No President Is Well-served By Groupthink Or By Everybody Singing From The Same Sheet Of Music They Think He's On.

I Read In The Press, And Therefore It Must Be True, That No Secretary Of Defense Had Ever Been Quoted As Arguing For A Bigger Budget For State.

I've Spent My Entire Adult Life With The United States As A Superpower And One That Had No Compunction About Spending What It Took To Sustain That Position. And It Didn't Have To Look Over Its Shoulder Because Our Economy Was So Strong.

I Think That Vladimir Putin Has Decided, In A Very Strategic Way, To Turn The Tables And Do Everything In His Power To, As We've Described Russian Elections As Illegitimate, To Try And Communicate To The Rest Of The World That Western Elections Are Illegitimate. And It's Not Just Us, We Know That Now. It's Germany, It's France, It's A Number Of Other Countries.

I Have Always Voted For Who I Believed Was The Best Person.

In Government, I'm A Strong Believer In The Need For Reform Of Government Agencies And Departments. They - They Have Gotten Fat And Sloppy, And They're Not User Friendly. They Are Inefficient. They Cost Too Much.

The United States Has Been A Global Power Since Late In The 19th Century.

I Fired A Lot Of Senior People Myself And I Think The Key, When You Feel Compelled To Remove A Senior Official, Is Essentially To Have All Your Ducks In A Row At The Beginning. Have Everybody Understand What The Rationale Was.

Development Is A Lot Cheaper Than Sending Soldiers.

Power... Military Success Is Not Sufficient To Win: Economic Development, Institution-building And The Rule Of Law, Promoting Internal Reconciliation, Good Governance, Providing Basic Services To The People, Training And Equipping Indigenous Military And Police Forces, Strategic Communications, And More Of These, Along With Security, Are Essential Ingredients For Long-term Success.

I Have Tried To Maintain Civil Relationships With Everyone I Meet - And, Even If I Violently Disagree With Them, Try To Be Respectful.

On The Foreign Policy Side, There's The Risk Of Being Too Spontaneous And Too Disruptive Where You End Up Doing More Harm Than Damage. And Figuring Out That Balance Is Where Having Strong People Around You Matters.

Often, Loyalty Means Telling People Things They Don't Want To Hear. It's Not Being Sycophantic, It's Not Telling Them How Wonderful They Are Every Day. It's Being Willing To Tell Them The Days They're Not Wonderful.

If Iraq And Afghanistan Have Taught Us Anything In Recent History, It Is The Unpredictability Of War And That These Things Are Easier To Get Into Than To Get Out Of, And, Frankly, The Facile Way In Which Too Many People Talk About, 'well, Let's Just Go Attack Them.

One Of The Big Changes In The Congress Since I First Came To Washington Is That All Of These Folks Go Home Every Weekend. They Used To Play Golf Together; Their Families Got To Know Each Other, Go To Dinner At Each Other's Homes At Weekends - And These Would Be People Who Were Political Adversaries.

If There's Ever An Example That Military Power Alone Cannot Be Successful In Afghanistan, I Think It Was The Soviet Experience.

And So The Greatest Of American Triumphs... Became A Peculiarly Joyless Victory. We Had Won The Cold War, But There Would Be No Parades.

I'm A Big Advocate Of Drones.

I Will Always Be An Advocate In Terms Of Wars Of Necessity. I Am Just Much More Cautious On Wars Of Choice.

You Know, If I Were An - If I Were A Taliban, I'd Say, 'what Did Al-qaida Ever Do For Me Except Get Me Kicked Out Of Afghanistan?'

My One Concern Is That Hu Jintao May Overestimate How Much Power China Has In Pyongyang. They Have - They Do Have Influence, And They Do Have Companies, And They Do Have Economic Relationships That Could Make Life Much More Difficult In The North. Their Balancing Act Is, "how Much Worse Can We Make It In The North Without Creating That Which Scares Us More Than Anything, Which Is A Collapse In The North." And Then What Happens To All Those Nuclear Weapons. So They're Going To Work Very Hard To Avoid That.

I Don't Know General Michael Flynn Well, But It's Hard For Me To Believe Anybody Would Allow Themselves To Be Blackmailed By The Russians Because They Didn't Tell The Full Story Or Didn't Tell The Truth To The Vice President Of The United States Who Works 50 Feet Down The Hall.

Telling The Truth

What I Know Concerns Me. What I Don't Know Concerns Me Even More. What People Aren't Telling Me Worries Me The Most.

It's A Very Broad And Not Very Well-disguised Effort Of Russians To Create Questions About The Legitimacy Of These Western Elections. And, I Think, This Is Very K.g.b.

America's Civilian Institutions Of Diplomacy And Development Have Been Chronically Undermanned And Underfunded For Far Too Long.

It's Clear The Relationship Between China And North Korea Has Hardly Ever Been Worse. Kim Jong-un Has Never Been To Beijing In His Leadership. The Chinese Press Are Saying Some Amazingly Negative Things About The North, And About Kim Jong-un. So - So They Are Weighing In, And They Are Bringing Greater Pressure. Whether It Will Be Enough I Think Remains To Be Seen.

I Think Donald Trump Has Gotten China's Attention To A Degree That His Predecessors Have Not That This Is A Very Serious Matter For The United States.

Well, I've Ruffled A Few Feathers At All The Institutions I've Led. But I Think That's Part Of Leadership.

My Last Visit To China As Secretary, January Of 2011, I Told President Hu Jintao, Just Like This, "president Of The United States Wanted Me To Tell You That We Now Consider North Korea A Direct Threat To The United States." And It Had No Effect Whatsoever.

I Don't Think Any President That I Worked With Has Ever Said 'pretty Please.

I Consider Myself A Republican.

I Think In The Context Of Senior Government Positions, I Think An Anecdote Of What I Told President-elect Barack Obama When We Had Our First Meeting. And I Said, "you Don't Know Me. Can You Trust Me? Why Do You Think You Can Trust Me?" And So On. But At The End, I Said, "you Can Count On Me To Be Loyal To You. I Will Not Leak. I Will Keep My Disagreements With You Private. And If I Cannot Be Loyal, I'll Leave." Loyalty Means Doing What You Think Is In The Best Interest Of That Person As Well As The Country.

We Should Never Lose Sight Of The Ethos That Has Made The Marine Corps - Where 'every Marine Is A Rifleman' - One Of America's Cherished Institutions And One Of The World's Most Feared And Respected Fighting Forces

I Think That Iran With A Nuclear Weapon Is Extremely Destabilizing. I Think It Could Precipitate A Nuclear Arms Race In The Region.

If Possible, To Be In A Position To Announce Who Is Going To Step In As The Interim Immediately. And If Possible, To Announce Who You're Going To Nominate To Replace That Person. For That To Be Somebody Of Impeccable Integrity And Reputation Disarms A Lot Of The Worst Criticism That It's Some Kind Of A Power Play. It's A Professional Approach To Replacing A Senior Official, Which Is Always Going To Get A Lot Of Attention.

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