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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.

-Henry A. Kissinger

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The China Of The

Henry A. Kissinger

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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.

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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.

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

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.

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

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

Important Things

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The Elderly Are Useless Eaters.

I Think An Appeal To American Idealism And Willingness To Sacrifice Would Be An Important Contribution, Because What Is Happening Now In Many Countries, Not Yet In The United States, But In Many European Countries, It's The Inability Of Government To Ask For Sacrifices Of Its People.

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.

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

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.

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.

Does Anyone Have Any Questions For My Answers?

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Jews Were Segregated From 1933 On. We Could Only Play Against Other Jewish Teams. This Wasn't Just Social Segregation; This Was The Beginning Of The Extermination Of The Jews. That's Why My Family Left Germany In 1938.

We Are All The President's Men.

[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

We Are Not Just Any Nation.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

Behind The Slogans Lay An Intellectual Vacuum.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Whatever Must Happen Ultimately Should Happen Immediately.

I Think Vladimir Putin Will Give Up Power.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

Congratulations

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

Intellectual Capital

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.

Every Civilization That Has Ever Existed Has Ultimately Collapsed.

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.

I Don't Read Books, I Write Them.

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.

Covert Action Should Not Be Confused With Missionary Work.

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

The Absence Of Alternatives Clears The Mind Marvelously.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Intellectuals Are Cynical And Cynics Have Never Built A Cathedral.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Even Paranoid People Have Enemies.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 Want To Thank You For Stopping The Applause. It Is Impossible For Me To Look Humble For Any Period Of Time.

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

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.

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

To Revolutionaries The Significant Reality Is The World Which They Are Fighting To Bring About, Not The World They Are Fighting To Overcome.

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

We Believe That Peace Is At Hand.

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.

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

Power Is The Ultimate Aphrodisiac.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Even A Paranoid Can Have Enemies.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Let Us Fashion Together A New World Order.

World Government

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

[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.

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

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

Diplomacy: The Art Of Restraining Power.

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.

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

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.

Power Is The Great Aphrodisiac.

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

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

History Is The Memory Of States.

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

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

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 Real Distinction Is Between Those Who Adapt Their Purposes To Reality And Those Who Seek To Mold Reality In The Light Of Their Purposes.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Intelligence Is Not All That Important In The Exercise Of Power, And Is Often, In Point Of Fact, Useless.

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.

We Must Learn To Distinguish Morality From Moralizing.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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George Hickenlooper

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